2: Hammer of Thor Chronicles: Brotherhood
by La Aardvark
Summary: Four years after the events surrounding the Ark and the battle for Earth, Spartan Flint 093 finds himself in the company of old friends yet again; but this time, a simple visit turns into a harrowing mission to save the life of a small child...
1. The Smallest Of Us

**1: THE SMALLEST OF US**

Stars spun fast past the canopy, from right to left. Damage warning lights twinkled against the observation plates, the whole front control console alight with meters, gauges, dialogue and imprinted graphics.

_I have been here before._

The squealing klaxon's sound had been dampened, but only somewhat. There remained some semblance of contemplation as the situation slowly deteriorated. The pilot of the Longsword was alone on the four-man craft for the simple reason that he'd stolen the thing, but obviously, at this point, to no avail. Getting as far as he had, he'd assumed incorrectly that the region of space was empty, and he'd cut the engines to run dark for several kilometers before choosing his next direction.

Someone had spotted him.

His trajectory had been punted onto a new heading, and he'd acquired a rear axis spin. Whoever had shot at him, though, apparently wanted him alive for some reason, because while there was no way he could fly his own ship anymore, he was not taking any more damage from outside sources.

The Longsword was peeling its own self apart, now. Enough systems had been interrupted, breached, and torn completely out that the damage was worsening all on its own. It was a lot like bleeding to death from an otherwise nonfatal wound.

_I nose-dived into an old friend... crashed spectacularly, in fact._

Finally, something jagged happened to the power feeds, and the cockpit was plunged into darkness. All that remained were the spinning, streaking stars going across the canopy. The pilot tilted his head back and up, and looked at them for a moment before lifting out his sidearm and pointing it at the blast glass. The material was not designed to take punishment from the inside, after all...

_I am a terrible excuse for a soldier. I had to be dragged halfway across the known galaxy, because I couldn't walk there on my own._

Thunder barked from the dangerous end of the magnum, as the UNSC-minted bullet tore out of captivity at hyper velocity. The round cracked against the blast glass, and ricocheted once before embedding in the floor grating. The second round did the trick, though, and the interior atmospheric pressure would finish the job. As the cracks snaked across the canopy, the magnum found its way back into the thigh holster from which it had come.

Just a moment, now, and then...

_Those who carried me, those who sought to drop me, those I felled and those who watched me die, all are gathered here today... hammering me in the back of my goddamn head like a parade drummer._

The glass shattered outward explosively when the first actual leak broke through, and the standing pilot was sucked right out with the glass. He flipped end for end once, before the Longsword turned out of view. The port side spun up and he hit hard against that wing, the impact punting him hard away from the dying ship. A grunt escaped him, and for it, a light fog creeped up his sharp golden visor.

_John... I want my lucky back, man._ The stars were spinning left to right, now, and once every six seconds, he could focus on the center of that rotation, where nothing moved. _Seriously... I really need it._

SPARTAN Flint 094 had a new stripe on his equally as new Mjolnir suit today, but his haunted, dove-gray eyes were unfocused. It was no affliction, but rather a lack of need to see out at the moment. Like most soldiers who spent time on duty, he would crash whenever he couldn't fight, and he was close to nodding off already.

Without thrusters, he was going nowhere he wasn't pushed to. Absently he wondered if he could catch the hull of a passing vessel before his air ran out, but in the end, he could muse all he wanted and still not conjure anything useful. This was the point where anyone else would put their head between their knees and kiss themselves goodbye.

Wearing Mjolnir prevented him from bending quite that far over.

_Come on, come and get me. I know you're out there. Don't make me wait... I hate waiting._ He ran his eyes over the world with the glittery rings as it rotated past his visor, wondering what the lifeless thing was called, if anyone had ever bothered to name it. The sun here was a blue dwarf, and it only had three orbital planetary bodies. This one had an orbit of its own, apparently.

An amused smirk crossed the Spartan's features as a whale-shaped violet ship nosed out of a slipspace rupture to his right. It was a standard cruiser, nothing huge, but it was quite big compared to the free-floating Spartan. His pale blonde brows met in worry when he realized the impossible odds had planted him squarely in the thing's fast-moving path. He'd either be punted away or scraped right out of the sky, but neither sounded nice. Concussive forces still held sway even in vacuum, after all. It was why planets orbited suns.

_Sick joke._

The thought echoed through his mind as if his brain were a cathedral, but there was nothing he could do about any of it. He could only wait and watch, and hope that when it happened, it wouldn't hurt too much.

_John, I swear I'm going to choke it out of you when I next find your ass, if I have to... I really need my share of the luck back. This is getting old._ He laughed aloud to himself before adding, _Actually, it got old sometime back around the demise of my first Mjolnir suit. Maybe a few days prior to that._

He spread his arms out, and let them hang as the vacuum would hold them when he discovered his spin would carry him around to face his fate right as it met him. Deep violet hull swallowed fully half of the sky before him before he realized grimly that the ship's shielding was not online. They were told not expect a fight, or they were too stupid to expect one?

He cocked a brow in contemplation and curiosity when he realized he was aimed almost perfectly for a forward bay across the bottom half of the starboard side of the ship's nose. Just behind this spot was the reaching hook where the forward plasma cannons rested, but he couldn't see them. Again... at rest. Unsuspecting.

Just as he was about to impact the glistening shield door, it crackled, and winked out of existence. Flint swore colorfully right before he slammed hard into the back wall of the bay, the speed of his own drift added to the counter-speed of the vessel combining for a particularly crushing impact. His breath was knocked out of him, but a moment later, he got another hard knock when the bay door sizzled back into place, and the gravity of the ship took command now his impact speed was done with him.

Flint slammed into the floor on his other shoulder, but from there he pushed himself over onto his back. First he moved his fingers and toes, to make sure everything still worked. Satisfied but not unhurt, he spared his new location a look. The place was empty, probably because they sucked up jetsam like himself quite often with this one. But otherwise everything was clean and orderly, and when he pulled himself to a knee to stand up, the lights on the exit door flashed twice to signal someone had keyed them to open.

The doors slid up and out into the walls on either side of the barrier, revealing a single Elite standing in the purple corridor beyond. He ran his beady black eyes over the bay once before focusing on where Flint was, watching him stand up from his kneeling position.

At first, the Spartan had no idea who he was looking at, but the notion was amended when the Elite made a particularly human gesture towards him; the warrior waved.

Struck by the gesture, Flint could only wave back, feeling a little speechless. Obviously, he knew this one... which one was he? Was he one of the ones he'd known the name of? The questions jumbled in his mind at first, before he got them untangled again.

Before he could ask any of them, though, the Elite spoke, his deep bass tenor voice sounding annoyingly alike to every other Elite Flint had ever met. "Fancy finding you out here, 'Zelisee."

"I get around." Flint responded, dryly. "What brings you guys to this place?"

If there was one thing he'd learned, though, it was how to recognize Sangheilian facial expressions; the question made the warrior smirk at him. "I received intel you were in this quadrant, and I supposed myself free enough to investigate, and if I caught you, perhaps an exchange of greetings was in order. It has been a long time."

Flint huffed, and wiped at the golden visor in front of his face, before remembering the condensation blurring part of it was on the inside, and he couldn't wipe it away from the outside. "Visit. Huh. You must have known I was working." Before the comment could be met with a rebuke or an excuse, he added, "And how'd you get ahold of that kind of intel anyway? I was told this op was blacked."

The Elite laughed lightly, as if only mildly amused. "I lifted the information from a destroyed human frigate I found outside the sector. Honestly, 'Zelisee, I was surprised indeed to learn you were still entrusted with a weapon on your own."

Flint grumbled under his breath.

The as-yet unnamed Elite waved him down, still appearing quite amused. "There now, it was just a playful jibe. I am, however, amused to learn I was quite well-timed in coming to this place... or did you mean to be floating in little more than your armor out in the dead of space?"

He sighed; defeated, Flint shook his head. "No, someone holed my Longsword and I had to bail before it decided to pop spectacularly on me."

The Elite cocked his long head. "It would seem you ought to have learned by now to stay far from such craft, being as your relations with them are not precisely jointly healthy."

"One would think."

"I am not going to ask you what you were doing out there, where you stole that Longsword or why it required a Spartan to amend whatever ill was wrought, but I had wanted to ask you something else."

Flint held up a hand, palm-out. "Just a moment. Do I know you? I don't mean to be terribly rude but I had trouble telling you people from one another back when I was still running in your pack, so... after five years you kind of all blur into the same guy to me."

That spawned an incredulous look. "Why Flint." But he was still smirking. "I am 'Taramee, the 'oaf' you chose as first sword on your strike team on the Halo."

Flint nodded. "I remember the oaf, yes. But I don't remember calling you that."

'Taramee chuckled, sidestepping to invite the Spartan deeper into the ship. "It was a word I picked up from the humans who came to claim you at the end of our time together. Apparently they thought equal of me that you did... but for different reasons."

Flint approached the door, working his bum shoulder as he walked. 'Taramee turned and paced him as they made their way up the corridor. "I remember thinking you were the biggest damn split-lip I ever saw, but I don't recall attaching any terminology to that thought. You looked like you might be useful."

'Taramee barked a laugh. "Useful! We are all useful, human, do not doubt us. It is only what our individual uses are that define us and our value."

"What ship is this?" Flint asked, suddenly.

"She is the _Unhindered Immolation_. Not new, and she has her battle scars, but she is functional and she's fast. Under ideal conditions, she can even pass as stealthy. I was given charge of her a year ago."

"Crew any good?"

'Taramee shrugged. "They are warriors. Some complain, others laugh. We are not unlike yourself, you know. There is a comns unit operations manager I would much enjoy to slide my blade through, but I must restrain myself for much the same reasons as one of your Captains might."

"Know the feeling." Flint answered, gruffly. "How'd you guys get bored enough to want to come bother me, anyway? I thought the schism left a lot of cleanup to do."

"My command sector is clear... for the moment. Myself and crew are not the only 'bored' craft, but we mustn't thin our inner ranks. There are still small battles being fought, still the occasional massing of fleets and great wars between them, but we drove out the Covenant where we are stationed, and that left us quite idle for a time."

"Aren't you a bit far from... wherever you're supposed to be?" Flint cast him a glance.

'Taramee shook his head, the nictating membranes over his eyes snapping a blink before his exterior lids imitated, slower. His gaze seemed to stitch the corridor ahead, as if noting counter markers that Flint couldn't see. "Not especially. It is within a jump of here. We could be returned inside of two hours, if anything were to happen."

"Two hours is long enough for everything to get glassed." Flint reminded him.

"You forget... there are other ships in the area, moments from any opposing location inside our patrol lines. The location is not unguarded." The Elite spread his two-fingered hands, the opposing thumb sets spreading slightly with the gesture. "We trade out who gets to pop away for something to do."

"Oh." Flint nodded. "I guess that could work."

'Taramee looked a little too smug following Flint's admission of agreement for the Spartan to be comfortable with the silence, so he broke it again with a new question.

"I take it you're feeling pretty good about yourself, getting your sector all clean and stuff."

'Taramee cast him a strange look. "What a peculiar thing to say. Of course we would concentrate on the area. Why do you suppose it was so important? Our people have a colony world in the sector and it had to be protected."

Flint contemplated that. "Colony."

'Taramee's expression changed yet again. "Indeed. It is where my mate is."

The Spartan looked at him suddenly, as if startled that the Elite could have gotten one of those. "Really." He croaked, feeling flatfooted yet again. "Must be nice to know she's safe now."

"Yes." The smug look returned. "A perfect gift to celebrate the life of our new son."

Flint felt his tongue get fat in his mouth, and he stared bugeyed at the approaching juncture in the corridor for several moments as he tried to conjure that image. Big, overgrown 'Taramee, a dad? Somehow, it just didn't fit... and seeing the guy all twitterpated like this was downright creepy. "Son." He managed. "Uh. How... how old is he, now?"

'Taramee crooked his mandibles in a truly jovial smile. "Three days when I left." Then he looked as if he were counting something in his head. When he was done, he added, "He would be about two weeks old now."

"My my." Flint rasped. "Little thing."

"Oh, yes. Quite." 'Taramee agreed, seemingly gushing to talk about the boy. He'd probably talked about him to everyone aboard who would listen until their collective lizard ears fell off. Now he had a new victim, he was at it all over again. "He was so small when I first held him. I was so frightened, for the first time in my life, I was convinced that I would harm the innocent thing without knowing it." He shrugged, as if in explanation, "I've spent so much of my life damaging everything I touch, it was a rational worry, you see. Being a fairly active warrior throughout the human war, then the schism."

Flint nodded, feeling that even if he ran back to the bay and spaced himself again, he would still have to listen to this over the radio. 'Taramee was going to gloat over how proud he was of his new baby boy until someone cut the guy's throat, for sure. Flint had a feeling that if anything - so much as a surface scuff on the little one's skin - happened to said boy, 'Taramee's giddy mentality would melt right back down into rage at whoever had done it.

That was the definition, after all, of _twitterpated_.

"After a while, I was shaking so bad, I had to give him up, for fear I would drop him even if I didn't harm him otherwise." 'Taramee went on. It was obvious he thought the world of the boy, and it was likely the tyke hadn't even spoken his first word yet. Flint nodded just to pretend he was engrossed. He'd listen - he couldn't not, being as he'd been trained to take in _everything_ about his environment. It was habit. But intel on a newborn baby alien was not exactly useful to a Spartan. "I didn't really want to put him down, though... I felt like a titan, compared to his tiny self. Like I was large enough to lean on a planet, and it would roll away from me for the pressure of my weight. Finally, I settled for allowing her to hold him, and I held her, so it was like I was holding both of them."

Flint swallowed, trying not to tell the gushing warrior he was making him uncomfortable. "Sounds like you had a hell of a shore leave."

'Taramee nodded. "It was short, but I managed to beg the right commander at the right time that I got to see the boy and his mother soon after the birthing." He turned his shining eyes at Flint, the expression likely akin to how he'd felt after greeting his newly expanded family. Buzzed. Drunk. Intoxicated. "When I first picked him up... he reached up, and he pulled on one of my mandibles."

Flint felt his brow might never un-knit. "Is that... special?"

"It was certainly adorable. The boy has spirit. He will make a fine warrior when he is grown! I have no doubts he will be strong and swift, like his forebears."

Flint cleared his throat. "You?"

That was about when the mood of the conversation changed. 'Taramee harrumphed. "Nay, not I. I'm about as clumsy as one can get without being permanently tangled in one's own legs. I've spoiled far too many a stealth mission just by knocking into things to claim that I am graceful under fire anylonger." He shrugged. "But his mother's bloodline is quite so - they might, if I am lucky, make up for all I lack."

"What if he takes on more daddy-genes than mom-genes, and winds up being your mirror image?" Flint asked, sounding contemplative. "Would you still be just as proud? The kid hasn't done anything yet!"

"He was born alive." 'Taramee protested, sounding as if he might pout. But what he said next caught the poor Spartan flatfooted yet again. "What's a daddy?"

He choked on a laugh as he got himself sorted, following the warrior around the first corner and proceeding with him up the next length of hall. "You are."

"I... don't fully understand." 'Taramee admitted.

"Oh, why me? I don't even remember my parents." Flint moaned. "A father is some random guy who did stud work on your mother. A dad, on the other hand, is the man who took the time to invest care and knowledge into the kid as he or she grows up. Dads got hard to come by, in the human-Covenant war. Most of the men were signed up and out fighting to protect kids they'd more often than not never met, and wives they hadn't seen in years."

"Dad." 'Taramee echoed, tasting the word. Half his face twitched into a suggestion of a possible expression, before it spread and he actually made the face. It turned out to be a goofy grin. "I like it."

Flint couldn't help but laugh, shaking his head. "Really, really never would have pegged you for a dad, 'Tar."

"I suppose I can reflect that, Flint." 'Taramee expressed. "But then, you're not the one springing a surprise fact on me about the issue, are you?"

"I think I remember having this discussion with G'wi..." Flint began, sounding speculative. "No... no, it was with Anuna. He was being a goof. That was right before they gave me that ridiculous yellow outfit."

"Zealot armor is - " 'Taramee began, his tone scolding, but Flint cut him off.

"Had that discussion, too." He waved a green-clad hand to dismiss the topic. "Not interested in having it again. I wore it, didn't I?"

"You bitched."

"And complained." Flint agreed, almost laughing. "Glad I'm not still in yellow. It's not my color, you know."

"You've never looked in a mirror, have you?" The warrior asked, cocking his head to look at the Spartan. "Without the helmet, I mean."

Flint blew a big, obvious sigh at him for that. "I meant glossy, bright and obvious 'shoot me' yellow, you big _oaf_."

'Taramee just laughed.


	2. Harrowing Truths

2: HARROWING TRUTHS

The trip back the way the cruiser had come proved quiet and peaceful, uneventful to the last. Flint spent most of the time listening to 'Taramee reiterating tales of his three-day shore leave, but between tales the Elite would ask the occasional question prying into the latest activities of the Spartan he was blubbering at.

While not much of a talker - and certainly not a storyteller - Flint took the brief respites as sacred, and would explain this or that mission for as long as the warrior listening would allow. Somehow, by some means, everything would always wind and coil around and around until it came back to that little Sangheili baby boy, and then 'Taramee would go at it again.

Blessedly, he didn't go over the same over-expressed few hours again and again, but rather sought out all kinds of new ways to re-gloss the quickly uninteresting story. Sometimes he'd toss a mention in about the tyke without even making it worth the mention. Flint got the idea that everyone who walked past them or had to interact with either of them had all of it memorized already... and few of them lingered long.

Finally, by some minor miracle, Flint stumbled upon a good topic to distract the enamored father from his new progeny.

"Seen G'wi around recently?"

'Taramee was silent for longer than it took to inhale for the first time since Flint had come aboard to notice, and when the Spartan looked over at him, he looked contemplative, as if he were suddenly come aware of a memory that had escaped him; finally, though, he did lift his long head, and look back at him. "I don't know."

"You don't know?" Flint asked, astonished.

"Well, I recall the last time I spoke to him, but I don't remember when that was. Some weeks back. More than a few." He raised a hand, and dragged his claws over his helmet as if trying to scratch a covered spot on his noggin. Finally the hand settled to just resting there. It looked rather comical to Flint, who felt infinitely grateful to his concealing visor.

"I see." Too late he realized his expression had written itself into his tone, and he knew when 'Taramee's gaze snapped up that he was in trouble. Instinct took him back a full stride before his logical brain could react at all, but it still wasn't far enough back to be out of range when the massive Elite swiped at him.

Flint caught the swipe full in the face, and he started at the closeness of those large claws grating across his golden visor as they went by. The strike seemed playful, though, as it had only been enough to unbalance him, and did not send him tumbling in the least. Shifting a foot to catch himself, he slung a hand back at the alien, catching the retreating arm at the backside of the swipe and redirecting the arm downward.

'Taramee reclaimed his arm, and laughed. "You've gotten slow, 'Zelisee."

"Slow!" Flint croaked. "You had me thinking we were friends! Now, I don't know about you, but on my world, you don't have to watch your friends to keep them from stabbing you in the back!"

'Taramee gave him a convincingly hurt look. "I did not use any kind of weapon, least of all a blade."

Flint reclaimed the lost two strides between them, and popped a fist off the top of the Elite's helmeted head. The impact caused a rather musical _bong_ to resonate through the cruiser's command deck. Everyone turned their heads to see what it had been, but too late to see Flint with his arm up. 'Taramee grabbed the spot, startled by the impact, then raised his head back up to meet Flint's gaze.

He had his Mjolnir-clad arms crossed, standing in one of those classic indignant poses.

'Taramee let his hand drop, and laughed again. "Alright, I get you." Seeing he was the center of attention then, the Elite's amused look tilted to a suggestive look. Instantly the bridge crew went back to minding their stations. Taking a breath, 'Taramee glanced back at the Spartan. "I suppose your people will be expecting your return shortly."

"I have a few days." Flint answered, nonchalant. "Every mission comes with a margin of error. Some things take longer than others." He turned his golden visor to the main holographic display forward of the raised commander's station. Standing encircled by holographic projections taller than he was made the room look smaller than it really was. But the constantly updating, changing, shifting nature of the imagery it displayed gave him an excuse to look at something other than 'Taramee. "Hunting brutes takes time, after all."

"But you had a specific area to cleanse." The Elite reminded him. "You told me you were supposed to be clearing them out from the moons around Reach and the outer worlds in-system."

"Yeah, yeah. A brute's a brute." Flint shrugged.

'Taramee shook his head, slowly. "Not all of the Jiralhanae are alike, 'Zelisee. Each, like us and like you, has his own unique prowess. Most of them are easily felled, if one knows what one is doing."

That comment earned him an interested look from the Spartan. "What do you mean?"

"I received word of a particular minor Chieftain who has thus far conducted seven successful raids without even being caught in the act, let alone challenged for it. His last attack left four billion dead and the world those souls had lived upon half-glassed." For the first time, the Elite seemed somber, serious. Gone was the jesting, jovial warrior Flint had been bantering with a moment before.

He nodded. "There's always at least one."

'Taramee looked at him, then. "You know of him?"

Flint shook his head. "Not likely. But it's a fact of life, of war. There's always at least one involved in the fighting who is better than the others due to cunning and wit, rather than muscle. More often than not... said person _has_ no muscle."

"A fitting reaction to such a condition, I would imagine." 'Taramee nodded once. "But it does us no good to know that such a being has manifested on the offending side of this conflict."

"Offending?"

"I do not need to explain our culture and beliefs to you, 'Zelisee, you already know the answer to that question." 'Taramee scolded. "You were one of us, once."

The last sentence was spoken low and level so only Flint could have heard it, giving the Spartan more to think about than just the words involved. The pair stood in silence staring at one another for nearly a full minute before Flint looked away first. Taking a quiet breath, he added, "I know."

* * *

Slipspace was a place he hadn't stayed for a long time. Years ago he'd gone so far as to spend a week or so just in transit, but mainly when transported, Spartans did it over excessive distances as cryogenic ice blocks. To find himself sitting thawed and warm inside a ship flying through slipspace was novel indeed.

That said seat was not in a cell, but was still onboard a formerly Covenant cruiser, was more so. Few Humans got this rare experience, and fewer still, Flint supposed, got to do it under such welcoming conditions. Being pretty good friends with the ship's commander helped considerably, though.

The room was a standard crew quarter, one left empty presumably because the ship didn't need a full compliment of ground troops to fight in the deep regions of space, where there was no ground to put boots onto. Looking around the architecture of the place reminded him of the interior of a Longsword fighter. In the light, it all looked alien and almost organic. But in the dark, with only the faint light of the warping and twisting anomaly outside the hull to illuminate the quarter, it looked close indeed. The odd shadowplay coming through the transparent steel window looked almost liquid, as light might seem if shone through water first.

All things considered, it probably wasn't a bad analogy of the sight. Flint had his helmet in his hands, but had removed nothing else. His magnum sidearm still rested nestled in the holster attached to his thigh armor, which was still wrapped around his leg. He was up to his neck in Mjolnir combat skin, even with the helmet between his knees, in his grasp. The quiet was a rare thing, for him, rare for any Spartan, truth be told.

He often spent the instances he found them pondering the fate of his long lost siblings. It had been so long since he'd seen any of them that he often wondered if the intel suggesting most of them were dead was in fact truth. The fact that he had died once himself and stayed that way for nearly six months before being revived again often skipped his mind; how many unfortunate souls could endure that same treatment before it became rote?

As far as he had heard, it remained still quite unheard of. Had he not had a handful of Elites to back up his own final report to ONI HQ, he would have been investigated for combat shock, mental instability, or outright insanity. Perhaps all three.

With the only sound truly audible in the room being his breath, the inner workings of his suit and body became noticeable, and again he could hear his own heart beating. There were perks to being a genetically and mechanically enhanced super soldier, it was true, but the downsides existed as well.

And that was that moments like these... moments of peace, of quiet, of respite, were so few and far between that they became like the timeless gold and diamonds of war. Everyone sought them... but Spartans most of all. Thoughts from the day swirled around in his head almost like the seamless frenetic motions of the holographic display screens surrounding the commander's station aboard the bridge. Hurried, bright, blinking images that were panoramic spare the exit from it all.

But there was no exit in his mind. He was surrounded, completely. Imaginary conjurings of what an infant Sangheili might look like followed with the echoing words of the proud father telling of it. Theories surrounding the intel on the brutes and their most capable member pulling his raiding runs mixed into the baby images, along with a memory of what a newly glassed world looked like.

They glowed an angry, betrayed red and black when freshly scarred over, he'd learned, nothing like the dead, lifeless, bleak grays that dominated the crusts of worlds glassed in the distant past. Reach, once a glowing green world full of life and its own amazing ecosystem, reported to be glazed over with blast glass from plasma weaponry early in the war, now hung as a lifeless dust ball, rolling dead in its orbit. There was a difference, he'd heard, between seeing a world after the fact and witnessing the event in progress.

Men had seen Africa fall to that same disease. By the counsel of one Human-sympathetic Elite did that not grow to include the entire Earth. It was ironic, he thought, that even after switching sides and fighting alongside the Humans rather than against them, the Elites still were just as eager to glass their Homeworld. Instead, somehow, someone had seen enough reason to just flatten part of one continent instead. How that near-brush had stopped shy of a complete job he'd never heard, only that it had.

The Arbiter had to be one hell of an articulate speaker, to make Flood-worried warriors ignore their instinctual reaction. On the other end of the galaxy, Flint sat in the room with his thoughts, and wondered briefly aside from most of them if anyone had found John yet.

It had been something of a disturbing pattern... first Sam, then Kelly, and then finally John. All of Alpha team was wiped out, but there remained some speculation because there was no guarantee one way or the other whether or not John was really dead. He was pretty good at skirting death, whereas Flint had gone and looked it in the mouth, even tasted it.

John just wasn't that adventurous. Flint was just that unlucky.

Or was he?

The idea reversed slightly as he considered a new tangent. What if, contrary to what it seemed, he had more good luck than he realized? How many soldiers got to come home on their feet instead of in a box after being declared medically deceased? How many soldiers got to lead a charge through a horde of Flood combat forms the size of the population of the Earth and be alive enough to share cross words with his comrades after the fact? How many got to explosively crash their Longsword planes not once but twice, and still come out of it alive and intact? Or how about meeting the most bizarre Elite in the Sangheili forces, and still managing to come to recognize that that alien was more of a brother than any Human before him had been?

Questions remained, still, but it was a refreshing look at his recent exploits. Maybe he needn't track John down just to wring luck out of the man. Perhaps someday he could find him, just for the sake of bringing him home.

John had always so loved home. It was his center. Flint had found his own buried somewhere far from it, though. The Elites all considered him one of them - if he grew an extra set of mandibles and started walking on his toes, none of them would notice. He was already a Sangheili warrior in their eyes.

But what did that mean? It was a nice backboard of identity to fall back to when all else was shaken, and it certainly granted him a place to run to for reinforcements if he ever got in over his head again. But what did it really mean? One day, he supposed, he would find the words to ask, and all that remained would be to find the one who had the right words to answer.

That would be a hell of a day.

* * *

Dawn seemed to pour across the deck like liquid gold, all polished and shiny. The light was different, and it alerted the dozing Spartan that something had changed. He looked up, his dove-gray eyes squinting against the glare of a brilliant yellow star hanging less than a thousand kilometers away. The transparent steel didn't allow the sight to burn his eyes, but he did look away, blinking, with an imprint in his vision. It would be a few moments before it faded fully.

His gaze settled on the door when its lights flashed and then it slid away into the wall. The Elite outside could have only been 'Taramee, but he was backlit so brightly that he was little more than an edgeless silhouette. "You sleep in that mess?" The Elite asked.

Flint grimaced at him, trying to get that annoying halo of orange to go somewhere besides around the Elite's head. It bounced around to wherever he looked, though, so he just bent down and lifted his helmet from the floor and put it back onto his head. "We all do."

'Taramee grunted. "Humans."

"Spartans." Flint corrected, sealing the thing down. He looked up at the alien again. "Just Spartans."

He got another grunt, one mainly for dismissal. 'Taramee waved in a scooping motion at him, beckoning him to follow. "Come, the morning meal awaits."

Flint stood up, tested his balance, then walked across the room. "When did we leave slipspace?"

'Taramee grinned impishly at him as they began to walk up the corridor together, shoulder to shoulder again. He towered over the Spartan, but he was the only one who truly could. Elites were, by default, a larger creature by far than Humans. But even though Flint and his ilk were bigger than normal Humans, they were not quite as big as a typical Elite. It was mainly due to the partly curled posture of said typical Elite that the two could look one another in the eye without actually bending or straightening. 'Taramee, on the other hand, despite being curled in that natural raised-heel pose, still stood almost fully a head above his peers - including Flint.

"What does that look mean?" The Spartan asked.

"You plan to eat through the blast glass over your face?"

"You're avoiding my question." Flint decided.

"And you're avoiding mine." 'Taramee countered, taunting.

"I asked mine first." Flint informed him, plainly. "When did we drop out of slipspace?"

'Taramee sighed, providing the best Sangheilian imitation of what a Human would call an eye-roll. Sangheili eyes didn't quite move that freely, though, so the motion was a little different. Flint caught it.

"Am I spoiling for our destination, or something?" He offered.

"I had hoped to convince you to accompany me to the surface, later today, for a brief visit." The big Elite admitted. "I didn't want to get started arguing with you about it before I'd had something to eat, though. Warrior can't fight worth a damn on an empty stomach."

Flint belted out a laugh. "You're impossible, 'Taramee."

"So an argument it will be, then?" He asked, looking over at the Spartan.

"You could have just _asked_ me to go with you, you know." Flint told him.

He got a curious look.

"You never know... I might even agree."

"But where's the fun in that?" 'Taramee argued, weakly. He might have protested further, he might not have, but his thick, toothy mandibles hung slack regardless when the intercom barked out something in a raw, guttural Sangheilian dialect.

Flint watched the warrior's expression first melt into shocked despair, then harden almost instantly after into unbridled rage. It was only his Spartan reflexes that kept him in tandem when 'Taramee suddenly launched into a full-out run up the corridor. He was nolonger concerned with the morning meal - they passed the entrance to the messhall without slowing. "Tar, talk to me, what's going on?" Flint said, a half-second before the pair hit a gravity lift.

'Taramee turned his head to look back at the following Spartan. "The planet... all of it... has been burned."

Flint gave a choked start. "What? I thought you said this sector was clear! One of your own lose his marbles this morning?"

"Unlikely." The Elite snarled, shifting his weight to the edge of the lifting energies, slowing to meet an upcoming floor. Flint followed suit, so the pair arrived together on the bridge. Fully half of the display shifted into a holographic image of the surrounding space almost as soon as they made it to the raised deck, showing a good deal of space and a fully-realized habitable planet in full view. Even from orbit, it was obvious someone had gone in and smashed a few things. Fires so large and hot they produced skyglow around the curled horizons were stitched in random patterns all across the landmasses, and where their glow was not, all was dark as pitch.

Smoke concealed what had not simply plunged into night from lack of power, but even as the daylight side of the planet turned into view, more of the same was seen. Huge angry black clouds of what could only be more smoke covered most of what could be seen, with only a few patches of ocean and the occasional branch or island visible through the screen. The same ominous red glow told all was waste and ash, and what wasn't soon would be.

It was as good as glassed. The world would likely not recover for some decades after. Flint felt his insides flop within him. The emotional outrage pouring out of the massive Elite beside him was almost tangible - had he a cup, he could have caught some of it for storage. 'Taramee studied the picture, his expression trembling with a thousand un-voiced utterances that all flashed behind his eyes, but his warrior's calm had descended over his paternal instinct, and he stood as if rooted, seeming to calculate.

Flint knew he was doing no such thing. Doubtless the unfortunate fellow could do little but conjure horrible images of his deceased family, cut down right as it was budding, and also of the equally horrible things he would enjoy to deliver upon those responsible for this event. For a warrior so fine-tuned and long trained to his craft, 'Taramee was not a hard creature to read.

Even for Flint.

"Tar." Flint said, quietly, toneless.

"Uvel." 'Taramee responded.

Flint dared look directly at him. "What?"

"Uvel." He repeated, his own black lizardy eyes glued seemingly permanently to the hologram. Even if the images faded, he would likely continue to stare at them anyway. "My... name is Uvel."

Flint relaxed. If he was six paces from death he still felt certain above all doubt that he knew what that was. 'Taramee might be beyond rational thought, but he still had his instincts; and apparently, they had instructed him to reach out for help from the one individual who he thought could not fail him.

Flint.

Crushing responsibility descended, nearly driving the stunned Spartan to his knees. Warriors rushed hither and yon, operations sped up, changed, shifted. Scans were taken, and then Phantoms were deployed to assess damage on a personal level. By the time detailed data finally started to register again, only a few dozen seconds had passed, but to Flint it felt like a lifetime. He was listening, though, when he heard one of the operators mention survivors. Without thinking about it, he grabbed 'Taramee and hauled him off the bridge, heading for a Phantom bay. He needed more information if he was going to be of any use at all... tracking required prints, after all.

And he knew where to find his first set.


	3. Familial Love

**3: FAMILIAL LOVE**

Coils of smoke hung so heavy even in the lower atmosphere that the warriors descending on the scene all had to don closed-face helmets, just to be able to see and breathe without being adversely affected by it all. 'Taramee looked no less wounded by what he saw, though, leaving all of Flint's senses feeling raw.

Anything flammable at a thousand or so degrees had burned, including most of the metals and even some of the dirt. What was unmistakably glass crunched beneath their boots, the layer thin and often already broken, but that plasma weaponry had been used on the surface from orbit was without question. This place was in as much disrepair as it could possibly be, without simply ceasing to exist altogether.

In the distance, the atmosphere gave an unhappy sounding static disturbance, and the smoke brightened in a flash of vicious discharge. If it meant rain, though, it would be a surprise. Everything was dry, here, dry and hot. Flint felt surprised almost as much when he stepped around the melted vestiges of what had once been a stone wall, and found organic remains. The bones were blackened, but intact. Their former owner had fallen face-down on the street, clawing at the destination denied them before they had succumbed, leaving only their posture preserved.

Seeing all the slagged and melted stones and metal made the discovery of something as fragile as bones a marvel. Worried they might be close to wherever 'Taramee's old estate might have been, Flint said nothing about the finding to the oversized Elite, and continued to walk. Outrage was clear, but none of the investigating warriors made a sound. None screamed or cursed, none wept, nor even muttered a single word. It was as if all of them were walking through a desolate dream-world best left for the condemned.

Flint wandered from side to side of the street he was in, looking down all the adjoining streets and alleyways, following 'Taramee as he picked his way through the strewn and misplaced wreckage. Everything that could be was broken, from the buildings to the street's paving itself. Even the brightly alight stump of what was presumably some kind of tree had sharp, jagged ends jutting from it, where branches and the top of the thing had all been broken away. The upper part of the stump was also hung at an angle, broken but not fully severed from the lower part. The blast that must have blown through in herald of the glassing touch of the plasma fire itself must have been horrendous.

The only light was from those scattered still-burning parts, but no two torches were fueled by the same thing. Flint tried not to look too closely at any of it, well knowing much of the ashes blowing in sidewinder snakes across the ground was more than likely alien remains, all mixed and stirred together across the population of the city he was in. Finally, more than six blocks from the skeleton Flint had seen, 'Taramee climbed over a fallen beam to slither through what had once been a front door. Flint considered the beam before pulling on it, but 'Taramee had given it all it could take, and it splintered under the Spartan. He dropped to a knee, unbalanced by the short collapse, but now his way was clear, so he stood up and strode through the opened doorway. The doors were gone - probably crafted of some other material than could survive a really hot fire.

'Taramee was nowhere to be seen, but now he was inside the dwelling, Flint could see it was large and spacious as well as littered heavily with fallen second-story-flooring beams. Heaps and piles of shattered furniture lay strewn beneath the beams, but anything less dense than wood - such as carpeting or wall-hangings - was gone. The wood looked badly charred, and some blackened ends still glowed with live embers, but apparently the building's exterior had been sturdy enough to protect its contents from utter and complete devastation. That it was there at all, and not reduced to ashes, like much of the street, was marvelous.

Flint stood still for a moment, taking it in, trying to imagine what the place might have looked like on better days. He imagined a roomy entrance chamber, likely with some kind of area rug woven with interesting alien decals. Reassembling the furniture in his mind was no easier than it would have been had the stuff been of human manufacture - apparently it was something the two had in common. Smash it with a beam as big around as Flint was, and both kinds would reduce to splinters best described as wood chips.

There was enough wood chips glowing contemplatively on the left to suggest some kind of long chest cabinet, like a buffet table that had drawers under the top. The right had a set of three somethings spaced evenly along the wall, which had also broken and peeled down to the studs that held it. Were they curio tables, chests of drawers, or something else? He looked down, at the seeming only bare spot on the entire entrance hall floor. Perched atop unidentifiable crumbles was a triangle shaped fragment of what might once have been a very nice decorative vase, painted over with fired paste coloring and ceramic dots. He squatted, and lifted the piece from the crumbles to look closer at it.

Part of what he supposed was a flower of some kind shone brightly in defiance from the smooth, reflective surface of the broken ceramic, the textured dots attached to the spaces between the petals of the depicted blossom giving the shard some character. Absently, he wondered if real flowers had ever been cut and arranged in the vase.

Did 'Taramee's woman even like flowers?

"Zelisee!"

Flint looked up, standing to see over the majority of the wreckage. Across the breadth of the room, he could see 'Taramee again, making his way tediously back across it the way he'd gone originally. "Find them?" He hoped his tone conveyed that he hoped not.

'Taramee didn't comment on the nature of the question, though - he merely answered it. "No. I do not believe they were at home when the strike took place." Arriving at the entrance, where Flint still stood, the Elite looked down.

Flint looked, too, lifting the fragment of the vase still in his hand. He opened his grasp when 'Taramee took it, but lifted his gaze back to the Elite's masked face. 'Taramee flipped the triangular fragment between his fingers, before running one thumb over the glossed exterior surface, where the dots had been affixed around the petals of the depicted flower.

Sensing he was being watched, 'Taramee inhaled softly. Without looking up, he said, "This was her mother's." He slipped it between his fingers, and held it out for Flint to take back. Puzzled, the Spartan reclaimed it, and let it rest in his open palm to look at it again. "A gift, to her, on the day of our ceremonial joining. She favored the piece out of the whole collection."

"Oh." The word felt spherical in his mouth, slipping out from his lips like a glass marble. She wasn't, he realized, all that different from a good deal of the females in the Human population. She liked fragile pretty things, and if she was anything else like them, she probably had kept her house immaculately clean and tidy, too. This mess they now stood in would probably have made her skin boil off her in outrage.

But she wasn't here. Flint looked up, to watch as 'Taramee walked slowly back out through the opened, doorless way into the street again. The way his massive shoulders hung beneath his armor, he might well have just witnessed their desecrated bodies instead. Had he no capacity for hope? Stepping over the broken beam across the entrance, Flint walked out to meet him.

Warriors in all colors of armor combed over the wreckage all around them, but nobody was going to come out of the city alive after a rain of death like this one had endured. Flint had curled his hand into a fist around the pottery shard, feeling the uneven, broken edges pressing into his palm through the combat skin that held his armor together. He was about to offer a consoling thought to 'Taramee when past one of the searching warriors that had accompanied them, he spied something out of place.

Noticing his change in stance, 'Taramee first looked at him, then tried to follow his line of sight to find what he'd spotted. Failing to explain, Flint walked past him, straight up to the object, and reached into the crumbled structural beams to pull it free. Warriors all around him paused and turned to see when he raised it up and held it out for 'Taramee to see.

"Brutes were here." The Elite whispered, his gaze glued to the scorched, half-crushed skull of what had once been a big, smelly Jiralhanae foot soldier. He had burned with the city when it had been attacked; a clear indicator of the reason for the brutes' coming.

"I think I know why your mate wasn't at home." Flint said, and tossed the crushed skull at him.

'Taramee growled like only a Sangheili male might, catching the thing in one hand and crushing the rest of it inside that hand. Now more than just his expression trembled with rage; his whole body shook with the effort it took to contain himself.

* * *

Flint looked at the map, reading off the names of the systems, of the inhabited planets, the numbers of ships rumored to be beyond what had been lightly named 'the Line'. It was the delineation of space where Covenant forces had fallen back to after the uprising of the main military species in their coalition, and now remained. He looked, but he couldn't make sense of any of it.

'Taramee had retired to his quarters, though to sulk or to smash the place Flint was unsure. He only hoped that when the Elite decided to come back out, he'd be a little calmer. Calm enough to see enough reason to listen to sound advice, and do what was right instead of what was irrational. He was no good as a commanding officer, or even as a warrior, now. Emotionally torn as he'd been, Flint half wondered if perhaps that was why Spartans had been denied a social life beyond their fellow Spartan siblings. It was a sound military practice, and it kept morale glued to the battle, and not out of it.

If a Spartan fell, it was likely that anyone who might care was right there to make sure the responsible party didn't live to tell about it. In 'Taramee's case, though, there was no witness to his pain, and he had not been there when the deed was done. That added to the angst, amplified his anger at himself. He likely felt his alien honor had been slighted, in that he had been proven unable to properly defend his family, or even the world he had hidden them on. Would he even be the same oaf Flint had come to know and appreciate over the years, when he finally came back out of that room?

In the time that 'Taramee had taken to sort himself out, Flint had gone up to the map room where he now stood to try to figure out where to start looking for the offending ship. That their prey was far ahead of them was obvious; how much farther ahead was the question. Where would a brute ship heavy with Sangheili civilian prisoners go? All of the crew had ideas, but if he listened to them then they'd be making stops at every single world behind the Line. None could agree.

Flint sighed, reaching up to take his helmet from his head. He wanted to rub the wrinkles of concentration off his forehead, and he couldn't do that with the helmet on. Dropping it onto the surface of the console, the helmet captured a full emitter's worth of the hologram, halving the picture as the Spartan pushed his gloved fingers across his face.

Tucking his fist under his chin for a moment, he ran his tired gray eyes over the protesting projection one more time. His blonde brows rose slightly. He'd dropped the helmet in just the right spot so the map had been segmented, leaving a warped pattern where the other projectors tried to compensate for the lost one's coverage area. What remained of the map shone out three worlds, all right behind the battle lines around the Line. The Sangheili-controlled section of the map was still clear, but now the rest of it was off the screen, Flint realized that the most likely place a trolling capture vessel would go after securing a load would be to the first place it could dump that load.

After hearing that the fate of the captives was likely a dinner table, it made sense. An army marched on its stomach, after all - feed the fighting force first, then those that support them after. The three worlds behind the embattled Line would be the first place to drop the prisoners, where they could easily be sorted, probably processed and then shipped back out as packaged rations to wherever needed them most.

He lifted his helmet off the console's surface, allowing the map to complete itself again. With his free hand, Flint reached out a finger and drew a line through the holographic projection, down through those three worlds, connecting them. The program responded by leaving a drawn, glowing line in the path of his finger. They were not close - but they were likely.

Maybe 'Taramee just needed a pep talk and a crash course in hope. It might refuel his ruined command capabilities, after all... there was no way Flint could hope to fill in for him, not with a ship loaded to the gills with seething Elites. He was optimistic, but not that much so!

* * *

'Taramee proved difficult to rout from his hiding place, but the Spartan didn't have that much patience. Eventually he worked up the courage to plunge into the masses of crew, though he felt very exposed and outflanked doing it. Finding 'Taramee's second in command wasn't easy, either... but he turned out faster than the oaf himself.

"What are you doing, human?" The irate alien demanded, sounding as cross as he looked.

"How long do brute bellies growl before your women and children start cooking?" Flint shot back, feeling the mood start to infect him. "If we're going to do anything more imaginative than revenge, we need to chase them down _now_. You officially do not have time to wait for permission from whoever your people have put up in place of your old hierarchy."

The statement made him think, at least, which Flint took to be a good sign. Finally, over crossed arms, the Elite asked, "What's your plan?"

"We can start with the supply chain." Flint told him. "Go to the place where something they'd consider food would go. What do you do when you have a standing army?"

"I don't fully follow that query's line of thought." The Elite admitted.

"Troops eat first. Suppourt staff second. Anyone else is beside the point." Flint explained. "So the food would need to stop before it got too far from the frontlines, because it would only be costly in fuel and time to ship it right back again."

"This is the most bizarre train of thought I have ever heard." The Elite decided, giving Flint a peculiar look.

"You want your people back, or not?" Flint demanded, impatient.

"But I follow your logic." He concluded. To the crew of the command deck, he said, "Find the nearest likely supply system and take us into slipspace on a direct course."

"Now, leader?" One of the underlings asked, sounding astonished.

"Now." He confirmed. The order was carried out in a sudden rush of purpose-driven anger, eager to arrive and unleash the pent up feelings on those who truly deserved to feel it most. 'Taramee's second turned back to see Flint, then, his expression speculative, at best. He had his eyes narrowed, and his mandibles crooked in just that specific way, that he looked almost hard to read.

Flint had gotten the look before, though, and knew what it meant. He wondered if he in turn would be so easy to read by the Elites if he actually showed his face, and they didn't get to conjure any matching expression across his visor instead.

"You may have a Sangheili warrior's honorific, but you are still Human." The Elite said.

Flint grunted. "It's not an honorific."

He got a curious look. "You consider it shameful, then?"

The Spartan shook his head; "It's not a title of any kind - it's just my name."

The revelation set the second back on his heels, though not literally, and his whole expression changed to surprise. It rumpled into disbelief, though, before he turned away, shaking his long head as he went. Flint heard him when he muttered something to himself under his breath, but it was in that guttural Sangheilian dialect that he'd never learned.

Maybe he ought to make an effort to, since he seemed to be missing more and more details for the lack. But, for the moment, he was content to count a score on his behalf; the ship was moving in the right direction, and now the chaotic uproar of protest and seething anger at the crime scene they had just left now had focus. And, whenever they came back out of slipspace, an outlet as well.

Hopefully, the 'stealthy' claim 'Taramee had made earlier was not a groundless boast. Diving headlong into enemy territory without reinforcements made stealth a completely necessary asset.


	4. Enemy At The Gate

**4: ENEMY AT THE GATE**

Slipspace ruptured, the fabric of the inter-dimensional sub-plane curling back like burning paper, only to heal over without blemish the instant the anomalous disturbance was passed. The _Unhindered Immolation_ slid down through the counterspin orbit of a near-passing moon, the planet it hung onto far enough away to be of no concern.

But the closeness of that moon was cause for some mild stir; it had not been calculated to be so near when the exit from slipspace had been made. The orbiting body floated away without incident, though, to the relief of the frazzled pilot. All others stood watching with bated breath, all eyes peeled and searching. As the world they had popped out practically on top of fell away, the rest of the solar system came into clear line of sight. Probing scans turned up much; indeed, the place was set up like a forward military base, well entrenched and well fortified.

Elites milled forth and back and forth again, most of them on some duty or task. Flint felt edgy, his senses scalding. If a dust mote fell, he felt it make impact. If a breath was exhaled, he heard its thunderous decompression. An eyeblink sounded like a gunshot, and the constant patter of so many around him created an unending clatter of staccato beats. It was that other sound - that odd pause-break-beat - that had his attention and focus.

He remembered his unlikely resurrection, back in the Mausoleum of the Arbiter aboard High Charity five years ago. He remembered how loud his feeble, straining heartbeats had sounded in his head, in those agonizing moments of absolute clarity.

_Thud..._

Eternity came and went, stars formed and were born. Nuclei expanded, matter was created. Singularities yawned open in realtime, and slipspace was ruptured by the warp in the space-time relation. The matter was swallowed, and was gone.

_Thud..._

An eon passed, a billion species rising from little more than bacterial suggestion, building vast solar empires and snuffing out again to leave their technological wonders behind as dead, hollow husks. The Universe did not notice their passing.

_Thud..._

Flint wasn't sure how to take it. He wondered what he was hearing, but he had analyzed every possibility and drawn an inconclusive blank. Despite the raw clarity he felt, aware to the point of pain, he still jumped clear out of his mind when a voice chopped through his current thought and injected itself instead.

He turned in-flight, so he came to rest facing the speaker, too frazzled to remember what the greeting had been. Hello? Not likely. The speaker was an alien, and aliens didn't use an ancient contracted form of 'good heath to you' to greet their compatriots. The term was from Earth, after all.

To his minor relief, 'Taramee looked little more at peace than Flint felt at current. The big Elite was, however, giving him a rather incriminating look. "Are you well, 'Zelisee?"

"You startled me." Flint admitted, attempting to dismiss his obvious fault. Spartans didn't let their guard drift like that... especially not when they were feeling so very exposed. What was wrong with him? That was the second time it had happened.

"I wasn't even sneaking." 'Taramee confessed, spreading his four-digit hands. "I have never seen you so jumpy before. What has happened in my absence?" He sounded like he expected a long reiteration of a great many events, but Flint had nothing to give him.

"We took a theory-inspired detour." Flint told him, bluntly, wondering why he felt a sudden urge to call the warrior 'sir'. Where had that come from? Flint looked down, then away, his gray eyes tracing paths across the air between them and his visor, wondering if he was losing his mind.

Now was certainly not a good time for that, if he was.

'Taramee didn't press, moving past him instead. He made a single pass around the command deck, speaking briefly with each of the attending crew before returning, at which point the look on his alien face seemed to mimic that of puzzled doubt. It was, as it might have been on a Human's face as well, a difficult expression to fully understand.

Flint wanted to be anywhere than right there right then. It was like facing down Ackerson after Halsey's disappearance. The air between them seemed to boil with agitation, the tension in the distressed Spartan building until he felt that even the most naïve observer would have noticed.

'Taramee inhaled softly, and let it go in what amounted to a sigh. "You've ambitions not unlike a warrior of my own people, 'Zelisee. It seems we were not terribly wrong, to call you as one of our own."

Flint felt fat-tongued and flat-footed. "...what?"

"You seek to command my ship without me?" 'Taramee explained, querulous. "That is a bold move, regardless of the circumstances."

"Hey." Flint defended, feeling mortal again. It was a decidedly relieving feeling. "I'm trying to rescue _your_ girl and kid. Don't whine to me about being replaced. You know without asking that's not what I'm up to."

'Taramee just laughed at him. "I like you, 'Zelisee."

Flint muttered something akin to a raspberry under his breath. "It shows."

More somber, the Elite beckoned him along as he went past. "Come, 'Zelisee. My warriors have prepared an assault wing to determine the prisoner occupancy of the fortress before they destroy it with the ship's guns."

"You mean you're really going to let me do this?" Flint marveled, turning to follow him, and hopping ahead a step to pace him instead. "I was rather under the impression that capture was a permanent stain on that thing you people called your honor."

"To hold my mate again, and feel her hearts through her chest... that is worth all shame and all other loss to me." 'Taramee told him, deadpan. "She is the... what is that Human term? Star of my life. Without her, I am... nothing."

Flint nodded, failing to correct the slightly misremembered term on the grounds of the situation; it got the point across, and at any rate, it was a mission where Brutes died. According to his mission papers, the more often that happened, the less explaining he had to do when he got back. A little recon, search and rescue on the side wouldn't ruffle any feathers.

'Taramee might even forgive him that minor cultural blunder earlier if this went well. But having something more tangible to focus on that he had long trained to know how to handle eased all his former woes; he could be a Spartan again, something he knew how to be.

It was a way to escape those alien moments of perfect clarity, where nothing escaped him while all of it got away, leaving him cold, empty, and sensory-deprived. Moments like those assailed him freely whenever he got combat gold. Nothing to do with his mind or body was a good recipe to start that nonsense all over again. It was beginning to make him wish for little more than stasis or battle for the rest of his life.

It was a feeble wish, he knew... nobody could escape something so deeply ingrained into their dissolution. But if he was really going to dissolve from the inside out, he wanted to postpone it for as long as possible. The walk down to the Phantom bays went quickly, but not nearly enough so; the ride inside the one 'Taramee ushered him aboard was little more than still and quiet. The Phantoms were running as dark as they could, flung hard and fast out of the bays like little rocks from a slingshot to avoid detection until the last moment.

The pilots didn't even speak to one another the whole way, and neither did any of the accompanying warriors with Flint and 'Taramee. One of the blue fellows handed him a Carbine at the halfway point, right before the Phantom's engines kicked on and they began the controlled part of their flight in. The soft hum of their active state helped to lull that edging invasion in the back of his mind, but the feeling lingered.

Something was wrong.

Flint pretended to fiddle with the throat seal on his helmet, but he really just wanted to run his hands over his face, to feel his own skin, to be assured he wasn't transforming into some kind of strange anomaly inside the Mjolnir. The last thing he needed was to shake himself apart right before a combat drop, right before the mission, but he couldn't get what he felt he needed most without alarming everyone with him.

And if he shook their faith in his ability to handle himself, then the mission would go very, very badly. The warriors could take care of themselves... but they would wonder what was wrong with Flint, and some might even go so far as to worry he might snap and start shooting Elites again.

The term for them from the Thirty-Years War returned to mind; split-lip.

None of these warriors wanted to be a split lip today. Humans killed split-chinned alien bastards, after all. There was a fragile truce, an almost-peace, for the Elites, however. The distinction was small, the line between one and the other still quite narrow, and the danger remained.

One Human - albeit an augment - surrounded by a horde of them was enough to make anyone fidget. Would the Human worry himself into a knot, snap, and kill one, or in turn, would one of the Elites take advantage of an opportunity to dispatch the smelly creature while none of his equally smelly friends were around?

Finally, blessedly, the Phantom generated that formerly horrid pulsating sound. It felt like a comforting heartbeat to Flint right then - it woke him from his spiraling speculation, and doused the ember of that anomalous clarity in the back of his mind as well. Battle-training took over, and he felt the casual suggestion of adrenalin touch his system.

Once that final buzz sounded, when the lift activated, he'd get a dump of the stuff straight into his blood, and that would spell the end of his current torment for a time until well after the fight today was overwith.

It might even earn him a decent nap afterwards.

By the time his boots hit the ground, his borrowed Carbine was shouldered and his formerly frazzled mind was focused. Elites swarmed around him for a moment, before the majority of them took off for a select location. Things looked quiet; for the moment, at least, their infiltration plan had worked. If Brutes came out of the holes in the ground now, they would be late.

Still, even if they did, Flint felt ready to meet them. It had been a small while since he'd gotten to accompany any significant fighting force, but doing it with Elites versus Marines merely doubled his odds of getting the job done quickly.

It was nice, he decided, following a red-clad fellow with a misshapen left calf and a pair of Plasma Rifles in hand. The terrain surrounding the narrow, box-end spot in the rocks where they had been deposited opened up around the next bend in the path, revealing one side to be a panoramic view off the top of a cliff face, and up ahead was the towering wall of a thickly constructed Jiralhanae fortress. It was primarily of Covenant design, Flint could tell - it was made of metal and that metal was purple.

After blasting blood of a dozen colors all over it for the last thirty years, Flint found the shade particularly hard to miss. Though, in retrospect, it usually signified one of two things; either he'd wormed his sneaky way onto a ship, and was grossly outnumbered without hope of backup, or he'd just been caught, and had a whole other dilemma to worry about.

Like most Spartans, Flint had endured his share of humiliating moments, and had been inside a guarded Covenant cell a time or two in the past. He was improved, accelerated, and augmented, for sure, but he was by no means infallible. The upside of any bad situation was usually the Spartan involved, though; for the express reason that no matter how badly messed up it got, said Spartan usually could rectify it to within a margin of acceptable.

Flint had served that purpose a few times, too. He listened to the gravelly ground crunching under his armored boots as he proceeded quickly across the span towards the fortress, but he paused before meeting it squarely. Here, on the left, the rocks piled up until they met sky. On the right, the cliff side fell away nearly concave, and he hadn't peeked over that perilous edge to witness just how far down it might be to the bottom.

The wall of the fortress was solid, here, without entrance or blemish. It was just a wall, though, soon proven when any traps, shields or defensive turrets proved absent. One of the dozen or so blue-clad Elites stepped up, and extended a gun not unlike a harpoon to the wall's lip. The tip fired off with a sizzling crack, the skinny filament cable following it doubtless made of something better than string or steel.

Flint watched in interest as the tip hit the purple hull and sank in. The Elite tugged once to be sure it was secure, then hit a switch on the harpoon-shaped gun, and was hauled up off the ground. He bounced across the wall on his hooves, ascending much the same way a rappeller would descend; quickly, and in bounds.

At the tip's puncture site, the Elite came to a stop, hefting himself over the edge without aid. He stood there, in plain sight of those below, seeming to survey what lay ahead. Flint moved closer to the wall, listening. If it was anything like ship grade, anything noisy going on inside was beyond hope of being heard from outside. Still, when he got close enough to it to reach out and touch it, his motion tracker lit up a red pinpoint and dragged it downwards across the graph. The dot took a left turn, and vanished out of range.

Interesting! Ship-grade metal would have deflected his motion tracker's sensor. Angry red bees swarmed up from behind where he was looking, though, each dot indicating an Elite. Without UNSC IFF transponders, they would stay red dots, but Flint had gotten used to that. To see a white dot was rare, of late. If he saw one, he usually dropped all else to go and investigate it, because more often than not, it wasn't supposed to be there. Shortly, the grapple gun dropped back, and one by one the Elites mounted the wall.

Atop it was disappointing, Flint found. The roof was flat, with a higher rising section of the fortress rising out of it some hundred yards away. That told him that the interior would likely look a lot like the inside of a ship... especially since the Covenant as a whole tended to have very little in the way of design variation when it came to their junk.

As quietly as they could, the group moved across the roof, heading across in hopes of finding some quiet entrance they could use. Blowing a hole would not aid matters much, as it was noisy, flashy, and would likely trigger every conceivable automated alarm and defense system the fortress harbored. Considering its apparent size, that number was likely to be a high one.

Flint looked ahead of the corner of the raised section, beginning to catch himself thinking again. Dangerous avenues awaited down that road, but there was no enemy, no sign of enemy, and no indication that that would change any time soon.

Right about then - at the conclusion of his depressingly abysmal thought - part of the roof caved under his leading boot, and he dropped neatly right through the hole. Darkness blinked up around him, and he tangled in what turned out to be a particularly small shaft leading straight down. Finally, catching a boot in what appeared to be a mounted rung, he was jerked to a stop.

Flint grimaced, aware he'd likely just sprained the living daylights out of that ankle. One leg was up, the other was down, his shoulders were twisted up sideways and one of the sunshades on his helmet above the visor had hooked into another, lower rung from the one that had snared his foot. He could see it plainly, now, that they weren't blurring past him in such a hurry.

Voices echoed up above him, which at current was to his right, but he couldn't distinguish any of them or what they meant. Still, despite his tangled predicament and his awkward position, Flint felt he was doing rather well... the sudden loss of footing had caused a frightful adrenalin spike, and now he was high as a kite... and blissfully unaware of anything beyond his current situation. He tried to wiggle himself loose, but succeeded only in confirming his speculation on the condition of his caught ankle.

It didn't feel hurt, in the literal sense, but it certainly ached wonderfully. Maybe if he'd somehow managed to not sprain it after all, he could continue with the mission. He'd battled on worse, but it was unlikely he'd enjoy this one. Being shot, stabbed, fried, flame-broiled or dropped out an airlock just wasn't the same as being lame but otherwise fine.

Lame but otherwise fine would make anyone crazy... all the others usually got more attention and focus than a stupid twisted ankle. Finally, one of the Elites arrived above him, and squatted down on the rung above his foot to reach down for him. "Give me something to grab - a hand or your other leg." The Elite instructed.

"Ha ha." Flint replied, sarcastically. "You can start with the one that's through that rung under your feet. That's what's stuck." He managed to pry his head around to see, but it took enormous strength to maintain the position, as he was holding most of his weight on the muscles in his neck doing it. He didn't get a chance to relax, though, when the Elite's grasp slipped, and he took another lengthy tumble.

This time, thankfully, he landed flat on his back. The impact was hard enough to wind him, and cause some minor protest in his shield emitters, but nothing else got damaged. Looking up from the floor of the ladderwell, he could see the Elite had not descended the rungs alone. Now he was out of their way, all of them were coming in, and they didn't appear to mind that he'd been dropped.

Flint grumbled to himself about that. He turned his head, looking around quickly once before rolling his shoulders forward and pressing up to a knee. The stairwell shaft was about four feet in diameter, flat sided under the mounted rungs - there was no straight railing connecting them away from the wall - but otherwise circular. Opposite the rungs from where he knelt was a doorless entryway, squared at the top and straight on the sides. It looked almost of Human design, save the corridor it opened into was crafted in that familiar, bowed-out ribbed-wall style. And, moreover, everything was a shiny, polished purple! Flint sighed, wishing he were elsewhere for a moment. Grabbing the Carbine he'd lost when he'd found the roof hatch by accident, he pried himself to his feet, and stepped out into the corridor. It was standard width, but almost as soon as he'd performed the action than he knew something wasn't quite normal.

He paused and looked back and down, to see he'd left obvious, bright footprints in what could be nothing other than a thick layer of silty dust. Dust! The kind so fine and so dry that it adhered to anything and everything, including the exterior of a shield. In Flint's case, though, due to the nature of his armor, it was likely the dust had merely been scraped out from under his boots. Lifting his gaze, he looked both up and then down the hall, wondering why the passage was so neglected. Did no one use it? Was there even anyone here, brutes or otherwise?

As the first of the Elites made the ground floor and began to emerge, Flint decided to see about finding a better-used section of the compound. Mistaking his forwardness for accurate direction, most of the Elites followed his lead. The group proceeded quickly and quietly along through an utter maze of dusty, empty corridors until finally, one of them grouched aloud that they had been duped into coming to an abandoned facility.

When Flint looked back at him, he wasn't the only fellow eyeing the human in accusation. His blonde brows dropped, and he grumbled to himself yet again... he was discovering that he really didn't like working with Elites anymore. Turning away from them, the Spartan moved on, keeping his Carbine level and shouldered despite the protests shared by not just the aliens he led but by that little voice in the back of his head as well.

They were not, after all, wrong.

Finally, after spending what felt like all day - but according to the mission clock had only been an hour - searching the level, Flint had to secede. If anyone had lived here, they didn't use this level of the building. He decided he knew why when he tried to get through the first lift platform they had found. The irises were sealed, and the beams deactivated and dark.

'Taramee took a little faith, and opting to burn up some significant sword charge rather than make a messy, noisy explosion with a grenade or two, he cut one of the irises away. A short, skinny Elite went up first, vanishing through the hole above them almost as soon as he'd been hoisted to it. He returned with more heartening news; the corridor smelled of fresh Brute, and it looked better used than the one they had come in by.

Time was spent getting everyone through the lift passage in the floor, but there was only one hole to go through, and it was exactly and precisely person-sized. As they gathered in the floor above the first, Flint came to realize what 'fresh Brute scent' really meant.

Here, the shiny was gone, though it wasn't quite rusted over. Nothing was clean. Shed fur lay in drifts in the corners of the floor where it met the walls, and it was obvious no one had mopped in years. Greasy smears decorated the walls, indicating someone had either gotten into a good fatty carcass or into the engine lube at some point, but never bothered to wash their hands before playing patty-cake with the walls.

Flint felt amazed. He also felt grateful that he didn't have to actually _smell_ what 'Brute scent' was like. His environmentally sealed suit took care of that for him. He raised the Carbine back to his shoulder, and looked up the corridor he could see down. The other side was blocked off by too many hustling Elites crowding through, but nobody wanted to be off by themselves now that it was evident there really were residents around.

After approximately half had made it through the lift, Flint waved at some of the ones that could see him readily, then moved off at a trot. He hated standing still - he was more apt to fidget than stand still. Barely had he rounded the first crusty corner than he came upon his first smelly resident.

"Human!" The startled Brute exclaimed, hopping back into the one behind it. "Alarm the pack!" Its mouth formed around another syllable, but the sound did not make it out before Flint had shot it twice in the eyes; seeing it collapse dead in front of him, the one in back realized his late companion was not rambling in a drunken stupor, but had in fact been quite serious.

He didn't get to do anything about it before he, too, was put down with his pack-mate.


	5. Speed

**5: SPEED**

It wasn't fire. It was hotter than fire. More caustic than fire. That delicate sheath over each nerve ending dissolved, assaulting the nerves themselves like live wires. Tissues both soft and hard quaked, shivering against one another almost independently, like tossing water.

The chemical reconstructuring had begun roughly an hour before, but at the moment, the carbon fiber polymers integrating themselves into the calcium of his bones was what hurt. Sedative, as it were, had no real effect. Pain, though... he felt that acutely. Most chemicals, most drugs, were needlessly useless. They had learned that when he'd been still a small fry, and had puzzled over the odd immunity ever since. Nobody had come up with anything to counter or even surpass his condition.

Sedative didn't work. Anesthetic didn't work. He was left to weather down the agonies of chemical and biological augmentation with little more than a self-induced paralysis to help him get through. Feet to his left and feet to his right, similar events played out in much more subdued tones on the Spartans he'd called his siblings. They were, unlike him, blessedly asleep. Unable to process the nature of the procedure. A few with stranger neural setups than his might still recall the signals sent to their unconscious brains after it was over and they had been woken, but most would not.

At what felt like the eleventh hour, he could take no more. He pulled. His arms came up from their restraints, bones, ligaments, tendons, and muscles captured by an iron skin snatching away from where they had once rested. Metal shattered, but the sound was muted in his ears under the pounding of his own heartbeat. It raced.

A single cognizant thought filtered through the thrashing, fighting struggle he put towards escaping the indescribable agony; _if my heart is racing, why is there so much time between beats?_

Indeed...

_Thud..._

Breath rushed out of him, all at once. Fabric - or was it leather? - tore, the sound thunderous. Something crashed to the floor, somewhere nearby, the sound of glass shattering on impact cutting through him as if he were the floor it had fallen onto. He tossed against the meager restraints as shouting filled the gaps. Hands caught against his convulsing body, tried in vain to restrain him, to hold him down. Over it all, he sucked in the burning, icy air of the medical bay, and crushing another Human's arm in his hand, all he could do was scream.

_Thud..._

The telling stomp of a heavy boot drew near, but though his eyes were open, he couldn't see anything. It looked like a massive pool of liquid paint, perhaps oils, all colors of the rainbow moving and blending but never becoming a uniform gray as logic suggested it should.

_Thud..._

Shortly, something impacted his head from the left, sending his fighting struggle tilting way off the balance of the gurney. Hands captured his head, hauled him back. Releasing the crushed arm at last, he clawed at the hands holding his head, but they were like trying to tear at raw stone with his bare fingers. They did not crush.

_Thud..._

A rushing sound replaced most of the pain, most of the horrible screaming. After consuming the noise, the rushing subsided, as if its appetite had been sated, and now it was gone to sleep. Silence dredged in like thick mud, catching and sticking to whatever there was to hold onto, whatever dared touch it. It clung, like mud, too.

Until, _thud..._ and with a pained, inward wheeze, the beat resumed a normal, seeming casual pattern. Blood rushed to his head again, and sight returned. The silence fell away into the soft, almost soothing hum and pulse of what was unmistakably a Phantom.

Phantom.

Flint squinted, scrunching up his face before opening one gray eye, and looking around. He lay still, and that fading tingle of fire in his veins seemed only a blurred and distant memory. In fact, the events of just a moment ago seemed more distant the longer he stared at what lay directly before his eyes. The familiar golden filmy coating hovered over his face, but the world all looked sideways. Parts of his bum shoulder ached, but for the most part, everything else seemed nominal. His environment did not explain itself, though, when memory finally begged at the surface of his consciousness; he did not remember finishing the sweep of that Brute base, nor did he recall returning to the Phantom.

Though, in retrospect, that might all be explained in why the world was sideways. As his brain righted itself in accordance with the vessel's false gravity, he began to register the sideways world as merely being seen from a prone position. Up had not changed since his last recollection. That, in as much of a small detail as it might have been, was still a comforting thought.

Up changing directions was something no Spartan, no matter how talented, could fix. Up needed to stay right where it was. He opened his other eye, and then took a breath before testing to see if he couldn't pick himself up.

A voice cut through the soft throbbing of the Phantom's engines, sharply. "It lives." That voice was a vaguely familiar one, too.

His instinctual reaction to it was to become annoyed, and to offer some sarcastic quip in reply. But without the rest of his still-wakening brain to tell him why, Flint reconfigured that reaction and processed it again before offering any kind of response. "What happened?" He got an arm under him, but that was all, before alien hands hooked under him from three sides and hauled upwards. He was upright before he could process the change, and for it wavered where they stood him. "Whoa."

"Curious that you do not already know, 'Zelisee." The Elite next to him said.

The use of the name brought him back to the present. He turned his head, and looked back at the Elite. As if expecting to be prompted, his brain told him, _'Taramee_, the name attaching itself to the face looking back at him from under a standard Elite helmet. In the dim lighting, it was hard to tell what color said helm was at present.

'Taramee cocked his long head to one side when Flint did not immediately reply. "Do you know where you are?"

"In a Phantom." Flint offered, his brows meeting. Yes, dummy. But _why_? The answer to that question remained missing.

'Taramee seemed satisfied, though. He nodded. Resting a hand across Flint's shoulder, he asked, "And what is the last thing you recall doing, before finding yourself here, wakening in this Phantom?"

Flint considered that. "I'd just killed two Brutes."

"They often came in twos." Another nod.

"No, I mean... the first two. After the broken lift." Flint felt his bad arm rise, and turned his head to look at it as that hand came up and ran over the side of his helmet. He found, to his surprise, a rather impressive row of scoring marks all down that side, raked right into the metal. He felt awed.

'Taramee made a clicking noise with his mandibles. Flint wondered if it might not be related to the human tsk sound. "That was a mighty blow, indeed."

"From what, though?" Flint marveled, retracting his hand and looking at that palm.

The oversized Elite just sighed and shook his head. "You found, 'Zelisee, and you routed the beast from its lair. And you did so, might I add, like a heretic idiot. Forerunners be praised you are not in a hundred pieces by now."

Flint looked at him again. "What?"

"It was an empty fortress, as for our target." 'Taramee told him. "You led us into the deepest parts of the place, to where even the Brutes dared not go, but it was empty. And you killed every Brute that dared show its ugly fanged face. Even, and most notably, their Chieftain."

Flint reached up and touched his helmet again.

"Yes, that's where that came from." 'Taramee nodded. "You fought that one for many long minutes before you felled it... but unfortunately, not before it in turn caught you squarely across your head."

"With _what_?" Flint asked, alarmed.

"The traditional graviton displacement field generator staff, also known by your kind as the gravity hammer. It was the cutting end that caused that mark, however... were it the other, you would nolonger have a head worth mention." He indicated what Flint was touching.

"And... how'd I wind up in here? How long ago was that?" Flint asked.

"An hour." 'Taramee said. "But that is a great deal of time to have lost, considering you cannot recall beyond your first kill of the day."

"Huh." Flint looked at his hand again. For some reason, it felt funny. Numb... almost. It certainly felt heavy, like a blood-deprived limb might. "Did I kill it?"

"Yes, I believe I mentioned that." 'Taramee reminded him, sounding annoyed. "Do you at least remember your own name, or venture I to guess you've a few bigger problems than one or two Brutes that may or may not have gotten away from you?"

Flint gave a light chuckle. "Aside from the killer headache, nothing seems amiss."

'Taramee's expression drew in. "The killer what?"

"Never mind." Flint shook his head. "Are we heading back to your ship now?"

"No, now we are docking." 'Taramee said. "In a moment we will disembark and be aboard the vessel."

"A simple yes would have sufficed." Flint grumbled. "We've a bit more than mere converse to cover while we're out here."

"Ah, so it does remember who it is!" The Elite proclaimed, earning a chorus of what sounded to Flint like disinterested grunts from the others in the Phantom with them.

"Hey." Flint protested. "Cut that out. After taking one to the head from a gravity hammer, I think I deserve to have forgotten something. It didn't erase my personality, so watch it with the quipping." When the iris in the floor dilated open, Flint was the first to step into it and ride the beam down to the bay floor. There, he took a few steps to get out of range of any descending feet from overhead, then paused to consider where he was supposed to go. The fuzzy memory supplanting what was supposed to have happened in the last couple of hours remained at the edge of his brain, disorienting him.

But when he saw another Elite go through a door at the far end of the bay, he remembered where the bridge was finally, and began to walk that way. If this fortress was a dud, then it had to be one of the others.

Landing behind him, 'Taramee set out after him, shaking his long head in bemusement. "'Zelisee, hold up a moment."

Flint paused, and half-turned to look back at the approaching alien. "What?"

"If you are this much trouble to your Human superiors, then I'm going to retire my sword and my armor and go draw aquatic reptiles from the oceans of Aarador with a hook and line for the rest of my life."

Flint grinned at him. "You would look horribly out of place."

"Not all warriors die as such, 'Zelisee, do try to remember that." "Taramee scolded, drawing to a stop. "What are you planning to do, seeing as how your stride looked very deliberate just now? Have you some plan you are not sharing with the rest of us? This is my vessel, my Elites. I do not recall giving them to you to command."

"You did, when you asked for my help." Flint told him. "And then promptly retired to go sulk in your private chamber."

'Taramee huffed at him.

"There are three places where your lost colonists might be kept." Flint outlined. "We have just erased one of them."

"And this is... what?" 'Taramee attempted, trying to prompt more than a hopelessly uninformative, succinct answer out of the Spartan.

"You do the math." Flint told him, impatient. "If you start with three, and wipe one out, what does that leave you with?"

"Which of the next two are we going to visit?"

"Close your eyes and point." Flint grumbled. "It doesn't matter. All the intel we have is self-righteous speculation and one rather disgruntled gut instinct. The point is, do you want to be able to say you tried, and in as much, that you have destroyed your enemy's front line in the process, or did you have a pressing Aradoran chore to attend?"

'Taramee snapped his mandibles together sharply. "We close our eyes and point."

* * *

Slipspace peeled away for the second time, revealing a new solar system, new planets, and very shortly, a new ground combat assault in search of the missing Sangheili. Flint knew that the operation was not liable to be condoned by either governing body; the UNSC, for one, would complain that prisoners taken for the purpose of feeding a standing military force would likely already be dead within a standard forty eight hour window.

But this was more than just a rescue mission; on the one hand, it would distract the Brutes from their hit-and-run stabs at the outer rims of Elite and Human territories, respectively, and on the other, the wayward Spartan was not, on a technicality, wavering from his initial mission stamp.

He was hunting down Brutes wherever he found them, and killing them to a soul. Standing on the floor of the Phantom bay watching the Elites charging up fuel and plasma and other things, Flint wondered if he'd be congratulated on a job well done or scolded for deviating from his intended mission area. This was a hell of a detour.

Ever since waking up in the Phantom on the ride back, though, the arm attached to his bad shoulder had not stopped aching miserably, and flexing it didn't help the nagging pain at all. He wished for a moment to undress, and see if there was more to the pain than perhaps a bruise, but there was no time.

It didn't hurt to the point where he was unwilling to use it, so it couldn't be more than a minor laceration or something equally as benign. To a Spartan, that was pretty much standard fare. Still, it was rather idiotic to run _into_ battle with an injury, regardless how light or small. Enough of those would eventually put him down, and then he'd find himself in the middle of a firefight without the means or the strength to participate.

Which was not ideal.

When the lights on the doors to his left winked twice, and the portal yawned open, Flint moved for the nearest Phantom. 'Taramee would be among those warriors coming along, doubtless, but Flint did not necessarily need to be on the same bird as he. The ride down was crowded and a little anticlimactic for him, with the casual conversation going on in the farthest corner proving more an annoyance than anything else.

By the time they made drop, he'd gotten word that one of their wingmen had taken fire and had been shot down. Those on his bird had been asked to probe the crash site and look for survivors. Once they finished that, they were to bring whoever they found and return to the initial mission.

The first thing Flint noticed when his boots hit dirt was the massively tangled amounts of foliage. All of it was strange colors - even the green parts didn't look right - and all of it was bizarre shapes. Plants he only knew were plants because they had large, broad leaves and didn't move like animals clustered thickly in the small opening in the woods. Or was it really a jungle, instead? The ground felt squishy, but he left no tracks at all, leading him to believe it wasn't dirt at all, but a padded leaf layer instead.

That was fine.

He fell in behind the first Elite to pick a direction and go, letting the ones who likely knew more about their desired direction and destination than he did do the leading. He had no problem at all with taking up the TEC.

He wound up being the only one in front, though, soon enough. Sudden sniper fire cut down the leader, and before Flint could zero in on the location of the other end of that shot, all the other Elites had ducked away and disappeared into the brush. The sharp report of his Carbine followed by the harsh splash of a body striking the leaf litter caused them to reemerge, though.

The commotion, however, alerted all the other snipers in the area, and made the going rather slow. Flint wound up taking quite a few nasty hits, but never two consecutively and never two in a row; everyone was being pegged at, and so much as a finger or toe out of cover was shot at. It lit the snipers up rather brightly, but it also kept the Elites with Flint worried.

They lost another one of their number when one of the snipers circled them, but while it gave said sniper a good view of all the Elites, it gave all the Elites a good view of him as well. At the demise of the sixteenth sniper, though, things became hauntingly quiet. Flint felt disgruntled; he hated snipers, as there were never enough to get him focused, and they usually instigated a duck-and-hide waiting game that he hated the most.

He probed ahead for several hundred yards before deciding there was an obvious gap of some kind, or else they had passed the protected area fully, and it was clear to move ahead. He signaled the Elites, and moved on. Reloading before the sound could alert the next batch of Brutes, Flint pondered a new thought; he'd spent almost a solid week with the Elites already, and still he had no idea what the particular one they were hunting for looked like.

An Elite, duh.

But a female.

Did female Elites look like male Elites, as in Humans? Or were they like practically every other kind of Earthen animal instead, and the females looked significantly different? Were they bigger, stronger, faster, like spiders? Or smaller, more frail, perhaps not as fast, like cats? And what of the baby? Did they go through phases of growth, like frogs from tadpoles, or moths from worms, or did their young resemble a shrunken, undeveloped adult, like most mammals?

Flint decided to ask once he got back to the _Unhindered Immolation_. Maybe the conversation would go well, and Flint could come away with some useful information. It was a rather tricky situation, though - some aliens didn't go through the artistic phase like the Humans had, imagining and conjuring all sorts of bizarre things and through it, learning how to objectively look at themselves.

He could, after all, successfully and accurately describe himself to any species and they each would know what he meant. Getting the same kind of unbiased and un-culture-stained information out of 'Taramee, however, could easily turn into another fiasco.

One Flint was not particularly looking forward to. 'Taramee was a useful Elite, but he wasn't that wondrous in the descriptive element. Flint was still trying to conjure a viable way to broach the topic with the oversized warrior when he suddenly and abruptly broke an unexpected treeline, and found himself out in the naked open - he backpedaled in surprise and alarm, before realizing whatever enemy presence the sticky field might have had, it was all condensed around that farthest point.

He'd found the downed Phantom's crash site.


	6. Pass The Ball

**6: PASS THE BALL**

The Phantom had been holed rather spectacularly, leaving little to doubt why it had promptly nose-dived into a rocky crag jutting out of the low clearing. Bits of rock littered the ground, crushed impressions leading up to each one to mark their paths as they had tumbled to a halt. Brilliant white, unblemished, unweathered stone shone like sparkling glass up on the shattered peak of the crag, showing boldly where it had been struck. All seven of the survivors from the crash remained holed up inside the downed bird, exchanging frequent and frenzied bursts of plasma rounds. Large sections of the outer hull had already begun to show signs of the abuse, and the rising distortion in the sky above it suggested the metal was hot enough to cast off toxic fumes.

Flint didn't doubt for a moment that the inside of that Phantom had to be like an oven. But from what little he did understand about Sangheili pride, they were not above hiding if coming out for that typical 'honor charge' was an assured suicide. That end, he'd learned, was above all the most dishonorable thing any warrior could commit to. Suicide, after all, did not cause any of the enemy to fall. It was also considered a weakness, and a form of blatant cowardice. None of which helped that alien sense of honor at all.

Suicide on the battlefield was the worst sort.

Those Elites would never step out of the Phantom - not to the tune of an execution. Not until circumstances changed. They would sit inside it and slowly cook in their own juices until they were quite well done and all were dead, and none of them would even consider attempting to exit the craft from the other side. Some of what the Elites did made sense - but most of it did not. As Flint sprinted ahead, pretty certain all the enemy attention was temporarily focused on the Phantom, he wondered briefly if the beleaguered crew might pop out if his company got their antagonist's backs turned.

In a rare display of unusual odds, every single Brute popping rounds at the bird spun about at once as soon as the first charging Elite let out his war-cry. It sounded like a cross between a lion down in the bottom of a canyon and a monkey distressed by fire ants to Flint, but he didn't comment. The lot of them had their swords out, and they were pretty much going to behave like a bunch of silly retards for the duration of that weapon's power supply.

Or until all the enemy were dead.

Flint drew up short, starting to fire on the fly, but taking time to really aim once his feet stopped moving. His attention divided oddly when he felt each round as it left the Carbine, the relatively soft kickback the weapon offered putting punishing pressure against his bad shoulder. He didn't even have the butt seated against it, but it still throbbed to the tune of his firing.

He gritted his teeth, maintaining his firing position despite it. He continued picking off Brutes right out from under flailing Elites, though it often didn't spare their bodies the resulting decapitation. He switched ends of the fight when he saw two Brutes bang into one Elite, running on their knuckles to gather power for the collision. He picked one off before it could accomplish anything else, but the second got the unfortunate Elite's head in a precarious bind too quickly to be stopped.

In mid-topple with three rounds through its skull, one of the other Elites caught it with an up-swing that sliced it neatly in half at the waist. Flint turned away, sweeping the field as the last of the fighting died with the last of the enemies. Heaps of brown fur replaced standing Brutes, and scattered, discarded munitions replaced the barrage put against the downed Phantom.

Tentative of what had changed, an Elite on the inside poked his head out to see. Flint walked the remainder of the distance, allowing his Carbine to fall to his side, so the arm attached to his bad shoulder might hang without responsibility for a moment. He stepped through most of them, surveying the field, before stopping over where the only loss lay. After having stood there for a few seconds, he realized the Elite had just blinked at him - totally paralyzed, and utterly unable to even so much as gasp or wheeze to communicate his condition, the Elite had been overlooked by all his brethren.

Flint shook his head, raised the Carbine and put a round through that eye. It was their way... it was also practical, given that moving someone with a broken neck would have been tricky under the best of conditions. Elites did not have that kind of medical technology anyway, given that it was standard operating procedure to kill those too wounded to recover easily. From what he'd heard on the subject, those mortally wounded tended to save the others the bother by doing their own selves in. He got a row of strange looks, most of those observing thinking he had just shot an Elite that was dead already, though most of them had seen him do it and knew it wasn't a spiteful action.

One round into the head was hardly bodily desecration, after all.

They left the bodies - all of them - right where they lay, adding yet more mystery to the Sangheilian way of thought. Flint followed them all back the way they had come, the party taking a slight deviation from the previous pathway to reach a different destination than their waiting evac. Those rescued from the crash spent most of the hurried trot between locations picking and pulling at their armor. Flint suspected it was because the stuff had warmed with the Phantom they'd been in, and was shedding the temperature too slowly for their comfort, causing them to feel stifled. He said nothing; not a single one would so much as admit he were anything less than one hundred percent.

The Spartan had to admit that there was one thing he did appreciate about the aliens over that of human company; they never complained. Never, unless the circumstances were really, really bad. They would, given prompting, blurt an admission of pain while in the middle of a firefight, but not that often. Flint figured if he ran across an Elite so bad off he was openly telling the world about it, said alien was likely trying to ask for an honor killing without actually saying as much.

It was, after all, their way.

The facility that loomed up over them shortly proved much different from the one on the last planet. This one reeked of Forerunner architecture, the freestanding pillars and loose, shaped rock blocks everywhere a rather telling feature. Within their radius was the actual structure, both odd looking and spire-riddled, as well as towering in the most precarious manner. One thing the Forerunners were particularly good at was anchoring things that ought to have fallen back to the earth long, long ago. If any of it even so much as wobbled, it would tear loose and come down.

Obviously, none of that stuff wobbled. It was, however, populated a bit more loosely. Jackals poured out of the woodwork - or in this case, the stonework - and brought their keen beady little eyes to bear across the muzzles of a hundred or so sniper rifles. Flint dodged between the freestanding pillars, remembering having to navigate similar ones on Delta Halo. Those pillars, he'd discovered, would wobble. These didn't look inclined to. He waited between the telling sounds of the _chung-bizz-crack_ that signaled each shot fired, hopping from cover to cover until he missed just once.

The round struck his trailing shoulder seconds before it would have been behind cover, but the shot didn't perform as usual old-model Covenant sniper rifle rounds did. His Mjolnir shielding popped instantly, the monitor screaming directly even as the force of impact spun him around and dropped him in his powered-armored tracks. Flint hit with a grunt, feeling dizzy and nauseated. For a moment, he lay deathly still.

Seeing that, the Elites suddenly charged out from their own covers, splashing the sniper's lines with enough plasma to keep their heads collectively ducked. By the time the Elites had stopped firing to allow their guns to cool again, all of them were under the lip of the roof the Jackals had chosen to shoot from. Fully half of the remaining compliment took the ramps and stairs while the rest swarmed through the surface floor, cutting sharply into any opposition like a wave crashing over rocks.

Taken from behind, and without cover to hide behind to make good use of their long-range weapons, the Jackals on the roof were swiftly cut down. When one of the Elites paused to look out downrange, though, he noted the formerly fallen Spartan was nowhere to be seen.

Brutes began to pour out from the inner workings of the facility, armed and alerted to the invading force. Leading only twenty-two of his full compliment of forty-one Elites, 'Taramee still felt capable of taking them all on right away. He plowed into their lines, sword lit, and with each wave of hacking, punching, biting, elbowing warriors, the Brutes were pushed back. When he ran shy of the offending creatures, the Shipmaster slashed his blade through some of the stonework behind a particularly mutilated carcass and roared his displeasure.

Farther inside, the facility condensed down to passageways and side chambers, most of which had only the one entrance and exit. Most of these, in turn, were doorless, and empty. Supplies crates began to appear at intervals after running through some twenty corridors, but no sign of civilian Elite prisoners or even the facilities to keep any. 'Taramee found that his only consolation for this lack - an effective mission failure - was in the cutting of the Brutes who occupied the place, even when he had to endure his shield being eaten down and then his armor heated on his chest before he could catch them. It was a small consolation, however, and it never made him feel very much better for long.

Reaching the center of the Forerunner structure - laid out much in the same manner as most other such creations, without any logical reasoning and perhaps imbibed upon too much alcohol - the Shipmaster found himself held back behind a doorway where the Brutes had him and his warriors bottlenecked. There was no way to effectively take the next room, not without dying. Each time he tried to put a shoulder to the lip of the entrance, the Brutes on the other side would set loose with what had to be a whole crate's worth of plasma grenades.

Given time, the blasting would crumble much of the architecture of the doorway, and if they hammered it hard enough, the opening might even collapse. 'Taramee could never get a good bead on any of the hairy creatures, his shielding insufficient to get him out through the doorway and into the room where he might do some good.

He was still sitting behind the next corner down back from the doorway, grumbling, when he heard footsteps too measured and too heavy to be one of his warriors. He turned his head around, to see behind him, back down the corridor.

The Spartan took five long strides and was upon him, sailing past in a green blur as he took the final three up the danger zone's throat, and sailed right through the door ahead of the falling charges that erupted behind him. Fire blurted out of the hole as stone chips shattered out of the walls, ceiling and floor. When the sound settled with the falling rock dust, a more interesting noise replaced it.

Screaming, squealing, hollering Brute voices rose as one above the horrible rending thunder of bullets, spikes, needles and plasma discharge. If any of the noise belonged to Flint, it was not evident; but he'd distracted their door guard, so 'Taramee jumped from his place and charged up the corridor, bursting through the shattered doorway with his plasma rifles forward and ready.

He relaxed his expectations, and raised his head, watching as the last Brute defender collapsed dead to the floor in a bloodied, defeated heap at the soiled boots of its killer. Flint half-turned, looking back. Several of the Brutes in the room sported plasma wounds, embedded spikes, and a coating of the needle composite that always remained after the explosive rounds had detonated. He'd turned them inward on themselves, charging down their middle and causing their trailing fire to cut their own down. Those who did not fall to their brother's hands soon suffered a similar fate delivered by the Spartan himself.

He'd shouldered his carbine, and held one of the Brute's grenade launchers in his hands, the blade slick and dribbling hot Brute blood. Much of the rest of that mess was splashed down his front, covering his dinged green outfit in a shiny crimson gloss.

Discarding the weapon, Flint turned away, apparently unconcerned about his sticky appearance. 'Taramee looked around, noting that his estimate of earlier had been correct; as his warriors filed in past him, some of them following Flint on ahead, he could see the half-emptied crates of grenades. They had been tossing them out as fast as they could get them out of the boxes, it seemed, at any sign be it true or feint of approaching enemy.

'Taramee had not been fast enough to get through the screen without catching more than a dozen of the adhesive explosives on his person; Flint was built for that sort of thing, however, and had skipped past the rain of shrapnel and plasma fire without even getting scathed.

'Taramee turned to follow the Human, feeling a slight jealousy for the prowess. Why couldn't he be that good? Ahead, Flint ran right into the middle of another group of the Brutes, the commander among them. This larger Brute took great exception to the Spartan stirring up his troops, though, and with a roar of protest, leapt into their midst with his hammer over his head.

Breaking the jaw of the Brute on his left with his elbow, Flint brought that same fist back around front to nail the one on the right square in the mouth. The snout of the struck Brute crunched inward, the skin breaking as the bones in its nose shattered through and out. Flint caught the third one, who had leapt in at his right, and brought it around in a bear hug right as the commander came down, using the unharmed Brute's partially armored body as a cushion against the terrible blast of graviton distortion.

Despite being braced, Flint was thrown back, landing in a tangled tumble before coming back to a stop. He took a moment to get back up, both winded and reminded of past ails upon impact. As he rolled to a knee, the Elites swarmed in and formed up, battering the other Brutes back with shots fired and fists slung. When the one nearest Flint was speared through the chest on the blades of a spike rifle, and thrown at the rising Spartan, he caught it, and rolled it over his left arm, before allowing it to fall.

Seeing Flint standing there with his arms at his sides, the Brute mistook him for easy prey, and leapt at him, an animalistic growl in its throat. Flint brought up his good arm, aiming upwards, igniting the fallen Elite's sword right into the attacking Brute so the blades formed through its chest rather than piercing it. The fight drained right out of the creature, as its shocked features slacked in the final moments of agony it would feel before it died in a spreading pool of its own blood.

Flint lowered the sword, allowing the Brute to slide off of it, and stepped over the heaped body right back into the fight. At the far end of the room, another sword lit up, and a Brute screamed.

Through the flailing, thrashing tangle of aliens, the Spartan managed to dig his way through it, cutting Brutes out of the grasp of the Elites they were wrestling with, until he heard the telling eruption of the gravity hammer coming down again. Elites and Brutes alike fled the site of its impact in unbalanced leaps, many of them suffering crushing values from the forceful push.

Flint stepped into the ready made opening, and brought a leg around, hooking the rising hammer back down to the floor, and verily walked up it to grab the Brute commander's collar with his weak hand, before bringing up the sword and driving it down through the creature's face into his chest cavity, avoiding needing to defeat the armor or the shielding first.

He stepped away back to the floor as the creature crumpled, little more than its face showing sign of damage or cause of death. At the last shot of plasma, Flint knew it was over; whatever remained in this place would be small, and likely not worth hunting down if it didn't show its face voluntarily. No one was going to command reinforcements attend the intrusion.

Flint looked up, finally, and noted the features of the room. Ahead was the remainder of the large, oval chamber, and at the far peak of the shape was another entrance. The walls were high, the ceiling vaulted. Stood in perfect mathematical position around the edges were pillars, holding up the outer edge of an unrailed balcony that ran the full extent of the oval. On that second floor over their heads, he could see two more doors.

"'Zelisee." 'Taramee summoned, stepping over several bodies to make the gap between them.

Flint ran his thumb over the activation switch on the blade in his hand as he lowered his gaze to meet that of the approaching alien. He said nothing.

"I have seen nothing to indicate this is much more than a planetbound ground force, near to the front to reinforce any empty troop vessels they might send out." The oversized Elite spread his hands, aiming his twin plasma rifles wide. "I have seen no provisions."

"Provisions do not go in the defense network." Flint answered, bluntly. "You will need to go deeper." He turned away, looking for some way up. Covenant used gravity lifts. Forerunners used those only for large moving areas. For smaller conveyance, they tended to install ramps. Seeing neither, Flint grabbed one of the pillars, and shimmied up it until he could grab the unrailed floor of the second level. From there, he let go of the pillar, and swung free of it, kicking off to add enough speed to hook a boot over the ledge. From there, he pulled himself up easily enough, and then got back to his feet.

He followed the balcony around the curve of the room until he reached a door, which automatically opened at proximity. He only realized he'd dropped the sword when he heard it hit the floor, nearly all his senses falling dead at his feet as he took in the interior of that upper floor chamber.

"'Taramee." He croaked, feeling certain nothing ever deserved this.

Hung in neat rows from hooks on chains bolted to the ceiling were the skinned and halved carcasses of more than a hundred Elites - of all sizes. Some could be little more than children, but all were skinless, headless, and their internal organs had been removed. Even during the Thirty-Years War, nothing would have prepared him for seeing this kind of treatment of sentient beings.

Even Elites.

They hung like sides of beef, like animals, the frosty temperature of the room showing clearly on their bared musculature. When 'Taramee stepped up beside him, he took in the sight as if it were not unusual at all. He huffed once, the sight of his breath fogging in the chill air causing Flint's mind to come back online. He turned away from it, looking instead at 'Taramee.

His look was returned, before the Elite turned away again. Together they left the room, neither saying a word. Flint dropped off the edge to the ground floor first, though he struck to a knee when he hit, unlike the Elite that followed him. Standing, he walked back for the door he knew would lead him out of this dismal place.

That sight would follow him forever.

"What we seek is not here." 'Taramee declared, addressing his warriors even as he walked through them, following Flint. "We make haste for the final outpost. If we do not find them there... I will glass these worlds if it drains every plasma conduit on that wretched ship of mine!"

Flint heard them roar in heartfelt agreement, but couldn't imagine 'Taramee's sudden optimism. How could he be so sure that none of the carcasses strung out in that meat locker were not the ones he was after? He had tested none of them. Flint felt that indeed, if they didn't find the colonists on that third outpost, this would become one of the most dismally, depressingly humiliating mission failure on his record.

It didn't help his mood much that he felt he was too close to the last available option to hold onto hope anylonger. The odds that they would come away with what they sought - ideally alive and whole - were growing more long and more slim as each minute ticked by.

Flint had dressed a carcass before. It only took a moment to put down the deer, and fifteen minutes to get its organs out and the skin off. Sangheili, he imagined, were much the same in that regard. The necessary fifteen minutes had long ago been exceeded.

As he walked out of the old Forerunner outpost, he wiped the coagulating Brute blood off his chest. If he was going to have blood on his gloves, he wanted it to be from the right creatures.


	7. Rest For The Wicked

**7: REST FOR THE WICKED**

The world looked stormy from orbit, and rain slashed at the descending Phantoms even more viciously than the up-reaching stabs of anti-air plasma. The weather was terrible, with visibility being next to nil, but while some of the warriors with them had difficulty with that, Flint and several of the older veteran warriors all knew how to compensate for it. Those formed up and led the way, first battling their way through tumbled boulders the size of their Phantom to the top of a hillock where the first anti-air turret was positioned.

Flint pulled the fuel rod cannon from the stiffening, cold fingers of the commanding Brute, primed it to fire, and blasted the rotary gyros out from under the main gun component from beneath it. The gun snapped loose what remained of the slagged and broken attachment, and after rolling across the anchored legs that had once held it up, the barrel of the thing tumbled loosely down the rocky hill to stop only after shattering off fully three dozen of the house-sized stones.

Pushing farther in, the Elites swarmed an outpost and slaughtered the creatures therein, several hundred Grunts and a handful or so of the shield-wielding Jackals forward of the ranks of Brutes. 'Taramee tore the head from the last one's neck, his snarl almost as animalistic as that of the Brute he had just slain.

Down the rocky, vegetation-thick slopes of a steep vale from the outpost, the Elites headed the assault on the exterior of the deeply embedded fortress attached to a landing pad. There were six Seraphs set on the pad, and a crew of attending Grunts, but these all fled for cover, scattering their tools and equipment, when the sound of attack reached them. Flint shouldered open the last door, tearing it nearly from its sliding track and wedging it against the wall behind it as he pushed inside.

Elites poured past him, trading fire instantly with the alarmed Brutes within the entrance chamber. Comn chatter could be heard over the radios lined up along the far wall, but the Elites smashed them all before moving on. They only had one ship to defend their exit from this planet, after all, and didn't need the one they somehow managed to miss to come around behind them and radio for backup.

Flint followed 'Taramee mainly because he sensed the oversized warrior's sprint was more aimed than random. The impression was soon verified when he drew up at a barred door, and had to use his sword as a cutting torch to get inside. Flint covered for him, though he only had to shoot down one Jackal, the rest of the resident population already well occupied by 'Taramee's other Elites.

Once the door was open, 'Taramee shouldered through, and in. Flint ducked after him, noting the sides of the hole the Elite had cut in the sealed barrier were still glowing. Looking around inside the room he was now in, Flint found himself looking at a corridor down the middle of a long double-row of energy-barred cells, each holding more than a dozen living Elites.

As he ran his eyes over the lot, he saw young, old, male and female alike, though there were decidedly few in 'Taramee's age range to be seen. Seeing one of their own on the other side of the energy fields had many on their feet and pressing against the barriers, clamoring for release.

'Taramee looked torn for a moment, looking back at them, before shaking it off and turning away to look for the cell control terminal. Flint watched him go, wondering if his warrior's sense that death be preferable to capture might have just twinged on him, before he could recall why he was really there.

Flint cast one final glance at the clamoring civilians, some of them hammering their fists on the energy barriers now, before moving on up to follow 'Taramee again. "They look angry." He commented, once back in earshot of the Elite. That range had narrowed considerably once the prisoners had started calling at once, so it left the pair nearly within arm's reach of one another. "How can you be sure these are the right crowd? They could have come from any planet."

Half-distracted by what he was doing on the control terminal, 'Taramee just clicked his mandibles. "Finding nothing at the first base was of some concern, 'Zelisee, but seeing those dishonored souls at the second gave me heart for one simple reason."

Flint looked at him, testing his grip on his Carbine. "I had wanted to ask that."

'Taramee looked up at last, as the fields popped and withdrew, releasing the multitude. "Their smell."

After that, there was no containing the clamor, and more words would need to wait until some of it died down, or the source had wandered off. Many clawed weaponry from the fallen Brutes as they charged out of their prison, but Flint didn't stay to see if any of them actually earned any kills on their way out.

Instead, he followed 'Taramee deeper into the compound, beginning to feel a measure of appreciation for the Elite's senses. If 'Taramee could tell the people he was looking for were not among a multitude of dead just by their scent, then perhaps he had not been so crazy to bolster his troops for this final push after all. Meeting up with a few of the other Elites still fighting their way through, the two split up to reinforce the edges of the assault. Flint counted seven Brutes and eight Jackals when he arrived, versus six Elites total plus himself.

He sighted his Carbine on a Brute in the back, deciding to take out as many of the big ones as he had ammunition for as fast as possible - if it really came down to that, he could easily crush the Jackals under a boot. But arm-wrestling a Brute to the floor took more than he thought he had to offer, what with his bum arm.

They ducked and dodged, trying to find some place where his rounds couldn't find them, but he just tracked and followed, missing only on the more sudden and hasty motions, eventually hammering down through the shielding and then the armor, until he'd put down fully half of the Brutes himself.

Two of the others fell under the merciless onslaught of plasma hailing from the Elites, all of them hugging cover. When Flint looked up from a reload, there was only two Brutes and a single Jackal left standing. Hunkered behind its small round shield, the Jackal was calling high-pitched insults as it peppered the Elite's cover, firing until its plasma pistol had overheated.

In the instant that that happened, three of the Elites sprang from cover. Flint used their distraction to circumvent the room, cutting around behind a row of stacked storage crates to come up behind and beside the remaining enemy. Right before he got around the far corner the crates provided, he heard a thunderous detonation spell the screaming ends of all three Elites.

Kneeling around the corner, Flint assessed the situation; of the two remaining Brutes, both had double bandoliers of grenades, the majority of them being the long-handled spike variety. The one farthest from him had a handful of plasmas to offer, but the ugly remains of the three unfortunate warriors between them and the other Elites suggested the willingness to unload everything on the intruders.

Flint had a few of those.

He circled around as far back as he could go, then shot forward as fast as he could run, slamming bodily into the nearest Brute and knocking into the farthest. All three went down in a tangle, but Flint got out of the tumble first, extending a leg forward and using his rolling momentum to lift back to his feet. While the two Brutes were still down and scrambling, he put eight Carbine rounds into the first one's head. The second got up, though, and came back, arms wide and face contorted into a furious snarl.

Flint heard 'Taramee exclaim right before the Brute made impact, but Flint hadn't even tried to evade. It wasn't in the plan... though being pummeled half to death inside his Mjolnir wasn't, either, necessarily. After harassing the Brute for a full minute, Flint got a knee between them, and kicked the alien off him. Immediately he rolled away and ducked behind the wall of stacked crates.

In the following heartbeat, the remaining Brute erupted spectacularly as all the grenades on his bandoliers detonated, shredding his torso.

Flint came back around the corner, then stood for a moment as he checked his Carbine. Looking up when 'Taramee approached through the spread of fresh gore, Flint offered him the weapon. "I'm out."

'Taramee stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing. He waved forward one of the surviving Elites, who stepped up and handed the Spartan several fresh loaded plugs. Flint took the first one, turned the Carbine away from him, and hit the ejection switch. He pressed the fresh plug down into the chute as the old one cracked against the wall behind him, then hit the floor and squirreled across it for a few feet before stopping. Taking the others, he dropped them into his empty belt pouches, and sparing the Elite handing them over a nod, Flint turned away to the next door in.

Behind him, he could almost hear them all shaking their heads in bemusement. "Humans..." one muttered.

Flint ignored them, stepping through the door and heading up the corresponding corridor at his usual trot. He could hear the Elites form up behind him, but when the party reached another set of cells filled with imprisoned civilians, Flint broke off from the Elites to pursue the fleeing guard. He well imagined a single Brute might run from a pack of four Elites plus a Human Spartan, but he wasn't about to condone the action. As 'Taramee cut open the door to the cell block, Flint chased the Brute around corners innumerable.

He began to wonder where the alien was taking him, but he had a feeling he didn't want to be introduced by a herald. Stepping up his pace, he managed to catch the Brute in the middle of a long straight stretch, and after the first half magazine, forced it into a side corridor it didn't really want to take. Each time it tried to pop back out of the cover of the corner and shoot back, Flint would hammer it with more Carbine rounds. Right as he ran out of rounds for that plug, he reached the corner of question, and he turned the Carbine before he hit the ejection switch.

The last thing the Brute expected was to be socked in the muzzle by a fast-flying Carbine plug, and it disoriented the creature long enough for Flint to bring down the butt of the rifle across the dizzied Brute's head. Once it was down, he spared the time to reload, so by the time the Brute had sat back up, Flint was able to put six rounds through its wounded noggin, and move on without it.

He reloaded again just in case, even though the old plug was only six rounds shy. Around the farthest corner of the long hall, he found what the Brute had been running for. There at the end of the corridor, a doorless entryway opened into a large, mainly empty room, lined on either side with support pillars. These reached far above to a vaulted ceiling, giving the room a cavernous feel. Rugs made from the skins of creatures Flint felt unwilling to identify covered the floor, but he cringed in knowing without even needing to look at the shape when he saw a familiar marking at the corner of one such rug; the UNSC spirit of fire symbol, tattooed on what had to have been a Human skin.

Gritting his teeth against any reaction to that he might eventually conjure, Flint focused on the rest of the room. Right as he spied the Brute to contest 'Taramee for mass, his comn crackled and hissed before he heard the aforementioned speak to him over the line;

"I have found her, 'Zelisee. We can depart this place, and glass it from orbit."

Flint worked the muscles around his set jaw, watching as the mega-Brute casually walked around a pillar, revealing he held something small and gray in one arm. "What about the other colonists?"

"My Elites report no more prisoner enclosures; we are done here, 'Zelisee."

"And your kid?" As the Brute made its way, unsuspecting of being observed, towards him, Flint began to pick out details from the Brute's shaggy chest; when the small thing squirmed, he knew instantly what it was. A rather miniature version of the typical Elite shape. _A baby_.

There was a prolonged pause as Flint waited for the confirmation of what he was seeing. Finally, it came. "The child was taken away some time before we arrived." He sounded sorry that that was so, but willing to accept it since he'd gotten his woman back. But Flint wasn't going to be so easily sated.

"Fall back to the evac point and wait for me." Flint told him. "I have eyes on the baby."

This time, the response was instant; "WHAT?"

Flint chinned off the comn line, more to keep it from distracting him than for any other reason, and shouldering his Carbine, emerged from hiding into the room. Spotting him instantly, the massive Brute dragged another of the gravity hammers from his back, and held it out in warning to the Spartan. When Flint didn't stop, he lifted the baby from his arm by its little neck, and let it dangle that way out over midair.

Flint froze mid-stride, braced with his head tucked to the Carbine's sights. "Harm it." He dared. "Go ahead. Sign your death sentence."

The Brute laughed, giving the infant a little shake that made it squeal in protest, waving its small arms impotently against the harsh treatment. "A Human comes to challenge me, for the rights to a Sangheili scum? Do you not know this is my favorite meal?"

"You're not going to eat anything." Flint ground out. "Put the baby down, and do it gently. Anything less, and it's your head."

Again, the Brute laughed. "I am Obivok, Chieftain of the Black Paw! You cannot defeat me, puny Human, nor shall you interrupt my feast!" He started to yank the child inward, his maw stretching open, but Flint took a risk and fired. Rounds splashed off the Brute's thicker, stronger shielding unit, but the impact contained enough concussive force to bash his head back, staggering his balance, and prevented him from biting the baby.

The instant the immediate threat was gone, Flint launched forward again, firing as he went. He chose each shot individually and carefully, only his augmentations as a Spartan keeping those pauses for recalibration and aiming between each shot from being significant. Finally, he was close enough, almost close enough to claw the baby out of the Brute's grasp.

The Chieftain came back, braced against the Carbine rounds, and roared right into Flint's face. In reply, he socked the Brute in the muzzle with his good arm - it was slightly awkward to make the hit when his dominant arm had not been behind it, but the force was enough to redirect Obivok's head.

Flint reached for the baby, risking his defenses in a desperate grab to get the child out of harm's way and possibly out of the fight he doubted would be short, as well. He wished sorely there were some Elites there to back him up, to ease the process of extricating the child from danger, all while never allowing Obivok the chance to swipe it back.

Remarkably, he got it, and hugged it instantly to his side, turning away from the Brute as soon as he had it. Just when he thought he might be home free for a half-second more, hairy fingers closed around his helmet, and his flight was yanked to a stop. Flint growled in frustration, grabbing the arm attached to that hand, and using it to brace against as he brought up both feet to kick Obivok in the guts. The Brute Chieftain huffed outward at the impact, dropping Flint as he did so, but in the same instant the Spartan rolled back to his feet, so too did Obivok. The Brute reached out, swiped, forcing Flint to duck rather than run, and ruining his immediate chances to escape.

Flint came back, then, running over the kneeling Brute and kicking him in the head once as he went over him, but again, Obivok caught him before he was out of arm's reach. Flint tumbled over the side he had the baby tucked against, so he brought his head down to shield it from being slammed off the floor during the roll. It might be borne of a bloodline as formidable as 'Taramee's, but it was still just a baby at the moment.

Obivok dragged him back, raking his fingers over the Spartan's grasp, trying to tear the baby from him. Flint stabbed upwards against the Brute's face with the barrel of his Carbine, jabbing Obivok in the eye hard enough to catch his shielding again and jerk his head backwards. His massive shoulders bunched as his spine arched, but Flint wasn't free yet. He rolled sideways to get out from under the Brute, scrambled over a loose skin rug, but only got to his knees before a hairy palm slapped over his visor, blinding him.

Obivok brought him back and down, tore the baby out of his grasp, and threw him away. Flint rebounded, though, and tackled the Brute the instant he was up. Obivok roared in protest, their shielding meeting and sizzling loudly in protest of contact, until both shorted to the other and burst, leaving both sheildless.

Flint hammered on Obivok's elbow until he let go of the child he was holding with that hand, but as soon as he dropped it, Flint didn't try to get away immediately. If the child got bruises, they would heal. Getting the little thing out of here alive was the object - if it was just alive, its health was relative, and could be attended later. Obivok curled upwards, attempting to capture the Spartan in a crushing hug, until Flint reached up with an uppercut under the Chieftain's jaw, slamming his mouth shut so hard his jaw cracked and several of his teeth splintered. The two of them collapsed together back to the floor in a tumble away from the child, leaving it finally, at last, out of danger.

When Obivok's mouth sagged back open directly after, Flint crammed a glowing plasma grenade inside, and socked the Brute across the cheek with the same fist. The Brute jerked with the strike, tumbling over his own shoulder and off of the Spartan. Loose at last, he turned away and made the minimum distance before the grenade went off.

But Obivok had gotten it back out of his mouth, and the blast only seared his face, instead obliterating the hand and much of that arm that he'd used to get the grenade out with. Sputtering blood and sending off coils of smoke wrought of seared flesh, Obivok scrambled weakly to his feet, and thundered away, running for all he was worth to get away from the Spartan that had brought him down. He trailed flakes of singed hair and dribbles of boiled blood as he went, sending up a wounded keen that echoed in the massive chamber.

The Spartan watched him go, still breathing hard from the exercise, and once the Brute was out of sight, he looked down. Growing horror crept up his spine, as he realized his failure. He let the Carbine fall to the floor, the sound it made on impact seeming hollow even as it echoed past him twice before fading.

Taking the last few steps between them, Flint lifted his helmet from his head as he knelt over the tiniest body he'd ever before seen on a battlefield. The baby was unmistakably dead; but that fact did not stop the Spartan from lifting the lifeless form from the floor. What tragedy of war could possibly beg the life of one so small, so fragile, so young?

Grief filled the Spartan, the whelming feeling seeping into his augmented bones. He had no answers to the spinning questions in his tormented mind, but he understood one detail. As he bowed his head in sorrow, the body of the Sangheili baby cradled gently in his powerful Mjolnir-clad arms, he knew there was nothing he could do this time.

He sat in the silence of the room by himself for several more moments, but the resonance of clattering Elite hooves striking the floor at a hurried run finally sounded behind him.

_You're too late... too late... and I was not strong enough._ It was the first complete thought to form, but though he wanted to, he didn't say it. Lifting his head, he sat still as he listened to the Elites gather through the door and swarm up to and then past him.

'Taramee paused to his left, looking down at the kneeling Spartan. Flint didn't say anything, didn't look up, but he knew he didn't need to tell the oversized warrior what he was looking at.

Finally, the Elites settled their stirring, and began to filter back the way they had come in, several casting morose glances down at the Human as they passed. None said anything more than the few loose comments about leaving soon. Flint couldn't have agreed more; he wanted nothing more than to be far, far from here.

But he couldn't escape the feeling of the dead weight resting in his arms, nor the sight of it, nor even the memory of how he had failed so completely to spare it. If he'd been faster... stronger, better than he was... he conjured multiple ways he could have fought differently, a thousand probabilities coming and going before all of it just faded, falling out of thought for the irrelevancy of it.

'Taramee inhaled softly. "Come away from this place, 'Zelisee. It is time for us to go."

Numbly, Flint nodded. In the tradition of Sangheili warriors fallen in combat, he set the baby back down on the floor. He took his helmet as he stood up, turning away from it without a second look. 'Taramee looked at the gesture with mild curiosity, but did not question; instead, he waved those remaining out, and followed Flint without a word.

The fight here was over. There was nothing left to accomplish by staying.

* * *

Back aboard the _Unhindered Immolation_, 'Taramee issued the order that sent searing plasma down to finish what their ground assault had not, leveling the fortress and every outpost the world harbored before glassing them over and leaving the remnant bits of the planet to sear and burn on its own as the cruiser pulled away into a slipspace window.

Flint stood on the raised command dias, his helmet sealed down and his arms crossed over his armored chest, staring at the receding picture of the scorched world until it disappeared into the flowing storm of slipspace. Then, he turned away, and left the bridge.

'Taramee loaned him a Seraph long-range fighter when they reached the Line, and watched as the little ship shrank into the stars, wondering at the departing Spartan's manner. He had watched the Human bounce back from terrors, traumas and horrors innumerable, but following their departure from that vaulted room, he had not heard him say a single word - to anyone.

He shook his long head, saddened at the loss of his young son, but puzzled yet at the Human's reaction to the selfsame situation. He dismissed it soon after, pushing through his crowded ship back to the bridge, figuring he would never fully understand those strange creatures, Humans.

_**End**_


End file.
